CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpregex
Ashley Banks
Ashley Banks

Reputation: 528

Insert tags within a string

Wondering if anyone can help me out here, is there any relatively simple way of inserting some tags with a given string after a certain amount of words...

for example, taking:

$string = 'Helping customers to do something everyday';

and inserting a after every third word so the output would be

Helping customers to </span><span> do something everyday

I'm guessing the use of a regular expression of some sort, but they are not my strong point or perhaps within a for loop?

/////////////////////////////

UPDATE:

Cheers for the help guys:

I had a brainwave and come up with this function, which done exactly what I needed:

function insert_tags ( $string )
{
$string = explode ( " ", $string );

$count = 0;
$result = '';

foreach ( $string as $s )
{   
    if ( $count == 3 )
    {
        $result .= '</span><span>' . $s . ' ';
        $count = 1;
    }
    else
    {
        $result .= $s . ' ';
    }

    $count++;
}

return $result;
  }

Upvotes: 0

Views: 805

Answers (3)

Rohaq
Rohaq

Reputation: 2046

How's this?

((?:\b.+?\b ?){3})

Replace with:

<span>$1</span>

So in your code:

$string = 'Helping customers to do something everyday';
$pattern = '/((?:\b.+?\b ?){3})/';
$replacement = '<span>$1</span>';
echo preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $string);

My regex tester shows this as the result:

<span>Helping customers to </span><span>do something everyday</span>

I'm not 100% au fait with PHP, so let me know how you go!

Upvotes: 0

Tehnix
Tehnix

Reputation: 2040

This is a little like @tandu's response, but I just prefer this method. It won't put a span tag at the end of the line.

function insert_tags($string) {
    $exString = explode(' ', $string);
    $newString = array();
    for($i=0; $i < sizeof($exString); $i++) {
        if($i % 3 == 0 and $i != 0) {
            $newString[] = '</span><span>';
        }
        $newString[] = $exString[$i];
    }
    $newString = implode(' ', $newString);
    return $newString;
}

Test returns:

Helping customers to <span></span> do something everyday
Helping customers to <span></span> do something everyday <span></span> okay there a
Helping customers to <span></span> do something everyday <span></span> okay there a <span></span> a
Helping customers to <span></span> do something everyday <span></span> okay there

Upvotes: 1

Explosion Pills
Explosion Pills

Reputation: 191729

You could do it with a regex:

`preg_replace('/\b\w+\b{3}/', '\0 </span><span>' ...`

But it may be nicer to do it with an array, assuming words are separated only by single spaces:

$words = explode(' ', $string);
$chunks = array_chunk($words, 3);
$final = '';
foreach ($chunks as $words) {
   $final .= implode(' ', $words) . ' </span><span>';
}

Note that both of these can have a final </span><span>, so if that's a problem you will have to trim it manually or just improve on what I've done.

Upvotes: 1

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