CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phptemplates
Joe Smack
Joe Smack

Reputation: 473

extracting (parsing) a string to pieces

<head>
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
  [{CONTENT:meta}]
  [{CONTENT:title}]
  [{CONTENT:head}]
</head>

[{CONTENT:open_body}]

    <p>[{LOCATION:main_1}]</p>
    <p>[{LOCATION:main_1}]</p>

</body>
</html>

I have the above "template_file" in a $string. I am trying to do a loop that cycle through the string and on each iteration gives me the left side of the tag, the tag itself in a new variable, and then the right side in another string. I can't use str_replace here because I need to extract what's inside of the tags before replacing them.

The output would be something like:

$string_left = everything up to a "[{"  
$command = "CONTENT:meta"  
$string_right= everything after the "}]".

I would then process data using the CONTENT:meta and then put the thing back together (string_left + new data + string_right) and then keep doing it until the entire thing was parsed.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 78

Answers (3)

casablanca
casablanca

Reputation: 70721

You can use preg_replace with a regex that matches [{...}], along with a replacer function that takes the matched "command" and returns a suitable replacement string:

$output = preg_replace('/\[{([^}]*)}\]/e', 'my_replacer(\'$1\')', $string);

And define my_replacer as follows:

function my_replacer($command) {
  ...
  return $replacement;
}

Upvotes: 1

Jonah
Jonah

Reputation: 10091

Why don't you just use a template software instead? Here's a big list.

http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/19-promising-php-template-engines/

Upvotes: 0

Andrew
Andrew

Reputation: 1357

You can do this with a relatively simple regular expression:

$inputString = "left part of string [{inner command}] right part of string";


$leftDelim = "\[\{";
$rightDelim = "\}\]";

preg_match("%(.*?)$leftDelim(.*?)$rightDelim(.*)%is", $inputString, $matches);

print_r($matches);

This will demonstrate how to use the regular expression. The extra slashes in the delim variables are because your delimiters use regex characters, so you need to escape them.

Upvotes: 2

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