CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpparsingformatting
crow1170
crow1170

Reputation: 33

How can I parse in PHP to format user-submitted posts?

I want to give users some formatting options like Reddit or stackOverFlow do, but want to keep it in PHP. How can parse a string in PHP such that it recognizes patterns like **[anything here]**?

explode() doesn't seem to solve the problem as elegantly as I'd like. Should I just use nested ifs and fors based on explode()'s output? Is there a better solution here?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 70

Answers (2)

MonkeyMonkey
MonkeyMonkey

Reputation: 836

Check regular expressions:

$string = '*bold* or _underscored_ or even /italic/ ..';
// italic
$string = preg_replace('~/([^/]+)/~', '<i>$1</i>', $string);
// bold
$string = preg_replace('/\*([^\*]+)\*/', '<b>$1</b>', $string);
// underscore
$string = preg_replace('/_([^_]+)_/', '<u>$1</u>', $string);

echo $string;

output:

<b>bold</b> or <u>underscored</u> or even <i>italic</i> ..

or use a BBCode parser.

Upvotes: -1

Jeroen
Jeroen

Reputation: 13257

This has already been done countless times by others, I'd recommend using existing libraries. For example, you can use Markdown: http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/

Upvotes: 2

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