PHP Replace

[CaseyBlackburn]

I have a string that I need to replace part of.
For example I have:
$string = "A link will go [link:http://google.com]Here[/link] and some more text here";

I want to change [link:%url%]%text%[/link] to <a href="%url%">%text%</a> no matter what the url and text are. How can I do this? I am unsure how to do it with a str_replace or preg_replace

 

[tim_m]

if you're not familiar with regular expressions you probably won't understand what it does but here's what i would do.

$str = preg_replace('!\[link:([^\]]+)\]([^\[]+)\[/link\]!i', '<a href="$1">$2</a>', $str);

haven't tested it but something along those lines.

it took me a long time to wrap my head around regular expressions.

 

[ameoba]

Doing regular expressions like this can get kinda hairy once you start looking at all the sorts of error conditions and weird nesting that might pop up. Fortunately, there's a bbcode module that, if you have a new enough install of PHP, should handle things for you.

I haven't tried it, but it might save you some time & help you avoid common mistakes.

 

[tim_m]

^ definitely. it always depends on the situation. if you /only/ ever want to do links, using a regex is probably the simplest and quickest solution, but if you want the ability to add different formatting later on, then using regexes quickly becomes tedious and bad performance-wise and you should look into a full fledged parser.