Harvey Segal

Hopefully this might just be a few lines of code
and if so I would be grateful if someone could supply.
(My head is spinning with ereg pattern matching)


The requirement:

--------------------------------------------------------
I have a string which can contain any number of 'tokens'.
A token is text enclosed by {}

So for example

==> Hello {abc}, goodbye {def}

I want to remove the {} and replace each token
with a string derived from the token.

So I end up with

==> Hello xxx, goodbye yyy

where xxx = function (abc)
yyy = function (def)
--------------------------------------------------------

Thanks
Harvey

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jaggyjay

Hey Harvey,

My php skills are still towards the "newbie" side.

But... you can post this prob on tek-tips.com. It's my
secret weapon whenever I have a coding question.
You should get an answer within a day or so.

Hope this helps.

Best,
-Jay

Neil Morgan

Hi Harvey

I did put some thought into this but it's not the easiest thing to do. I guess that's why you've not had a working reply yet.

The parsing of the original string to pull out all the tokens between the { and } symbols is the tricky bit because there's no one function that will do it.

It would need a function written to look for each { then read to the } to build the token, process and replace it (the easy part) and continue until all tokens had been read.

It's not that difficult, just a bit of a pain.

But I guess you already knew all that

Cheers,

Neil

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samstephens

I'd just do it using the string replace function:

$rawString = "Hello {abc}, goodbye {def}";

$newString = str_replace("{abc}", "Harvey", $rawString);
$newString = str_replace("{def}", "Sam", $newString);

echo $newString;


....gives you:

Hello Harvey, goodbye Sam


Quick and easy, just the way I like my code

cheers
Sam

Harvey Segal

Thanks Jay. I'll try them if I don't get an answer here.

Sam,

The problem is that abc, def etc are not known in advance

Neil

Would it help to do it this way

1. Read through the string, extracting tokens into an array (along with
the corresponding replacement value). This will also give you the
number of tokens (n).

2. Loop n times through the string replacing each token in turn

Harvey

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ofir

Learn regular expressions.

And then you will be able to replace patterns , such as "{XXXXXX}".

Harvey Segal

That's actually the easy part of the problem.

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drewjones

Is this for a membership site login and logout???

What I do to learn these kinda things is by studying code from the CMS programs (wordpress,joomla, etc.)

Then I implement it.

Hope this helps...

Harvey Segal

No it's not


Well I could spend hours searching and studying OR ask an expert
at the Warrior forum !

Harvey

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drewjones

Then what is the primary purpose...???

I spend the hours it takes to learn the simplest things....

I don't rely on others information...

Harvey Segal

Well - not that it matters - but it's an addition to
software which I have had developed for me

But I'm not planning to become a software developer
and won't need to use this information again.

The hours lost in getting this solution could
be put to better use. Agree ?


Harvey

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drewjones

Agreed...

take a look at this....

PHP: strtok - Manual

Harvey Segal

Thanks - I've had a quick look but not sure if that will
help as it would extract the text outside of the tokens as
well as inside

Harvey

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n2links

I stole this from some open source code. It may give you and idea of how to proceed.

function fill($template, $values) {

if (sizeof($values) != 0) {
// go through all the values
for(reset($values); $key = key($values); next($values)) {
$template = str_replace("{$key}",$values[$key],$template);
}
}

// remove non matched template-tags
return preg_replace('/{[a-zA-Z]+}/','',$template);
}

Jim Gray
http://quikonnex.com
Alternative to Email Publishing

Harvey Segal

Jim

Thank you for that.

I only know php basics so that's too difficult for me
to follow but someone else reading this thread
might be able to use it


Harvey

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Thomas Belknap

Harvey, I am not a PHP coder but do know other programming languages.

If you look at Sam's, you can change the Harvey and Sam to variables on the page. That would give you the runtime names instead of Harvey and Sam.


Does that make sense?

Thomas

Harvey Segal

Thanks Thomas but it still does not help

The problem, as mentioned, is that abc, def etc are not known in advance

Harvey

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Thomas Belknap

Exactly, the variables can be from a database or from something the person entered into a form. The information must have been sent if you want to use it. You just plug that information into what Sam wrote. This is done when the website is running.


For example.

A person can enter in a number between 1 and 10.

I don't know what they will enter in, I just know that there will be a number in a form field called num.


So I take Sam's code and do something like this.
= str_replace("{abc}", num, ); <--- you see I inserted num there.


If you don't know the values when the script runs then it will never work.

Thomas

Harvey Segal

Amazing

I've got the answer from tek-tips.com

Basically one command can do it


================================================== ==========
$s='Hello {abc}, goodbye {def}';

echo preg_replace_callback('/\{([^{}]+)\}/',whatever,$s);

function whatever($what)
{
return strtoupper($what[1]);
}
================================================== ==========

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Harvey Segal

But where did you get abc from ?

Harvey

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Thomas Belknap

You tell me. lol

From the url string, if that is what you meant in the OP. If you have more than one token with the url then you wouldn't be able to use Sam's idea.

Thomas

Harvey Segal

But the value abc is unknown beforehand
So you cannot have code which mentions it
e.g

str_replace("{abc}", num, )

Now if you are saying that abc should be replaced by a variable
and instead of one str_replace command we should loop through
the string then that is exactly the problem I am trying to solve.

However just after you posted I found the solution above.

Harvey

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andr102

Thanks! It helps! I think soon I'll become so good programmer!!

flash programming and web development
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rwil02

OK. Not a PHP programmer, but I can manage.
Here is the code stolen from above.
===========================
$s='Hello {abc}, goodbye {def}';

echo preg_replace_callback('/\{([^{}]+)\}/',whatever,$s);

function whatever($what)
{
return strtoupper($what[1]);
}

==============================

Wht's happening:

preg_replace_callback = the first funny string basically says match everything in {} that is not a curly bracket that gets your ABC or DEF

whatever is the name of a function

$s is the string you are looking through "Hello {abc}, goodbye {def}" in the example

So in the function "whatever" this code returns the uppercase version of the string that was matched (abc or def converts to ABC or DEF)

so you would replace the functionality in there with something like

$lookup = strtoupper($what[1]); //Assumes you want a case insensitive lookup
//Use $lookup to find the value you want, such as using a map variable or looking the value up in the DB (which would be very slow if you do it repeatedly).


===========================
$s='Hello {abc}, goodbye {def}';

echo preg_replace_callback('/\{([^{}]+)\}/',replace_token_with,$s);

function replace_token_with($what)
{
$lookup = strtoupper($what[1]);
return get_value_of($lookup);
}

==============================

Roger Willcocks
L-Space Design
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Harvey Segal

Thanks Roger, though I have now adapted and implemented the code
in my program.

If you are interested to know what it was for it was to
allow cloaked links in a PDF rebranding tool.

I need to change {{url}} to decodeurlscript.php?u = url
throughout a page of HTML.

You can see it in action here

Try the Demo (Item 3) at
Login


Harvey

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rwil02

Needs a login
So you have wanted something like

function replace_token_with($what)
{

return "http://www.example.com/decodeurlscript.php?u=" + urlencode($what[1]);
}

I've never found doing in place substitutions inside PDF files to work well, especially since it requires uncompressed PDFs.

How do you do it? Just a simple replace, or modify a base (eg postscript) fiel and generate from that?

Roger Willcocks
L-Space Design
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Harvey Segal

Login as a NEW affiliate

That's right

I modify an HTML file and create the PDF from that
See
http://www.ultimaterebrander.com/

Harvey

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