Extracting information from a string and replacing it again

[thehigherentity]

OK, im lost again

I want to pill out a section of a string from between two different tags
I want to make a couple of functions. I need them to work by inputting the opening and closing tags eg [mytag] and [/mytag] with the str

So the first function would do something like

Lets say “exreact_info” is the name of my function
[code]
$open_tag = “[mytag]”;
$close_tag =”[/mytag]”;
$str = “blah blah blah [mytag] info needed 1 [/mytag]blah blah blah[mytag]info needed 2[/mytag]blah blah blah[mytag]info needed 3[/mytag] blah blah blah”;

$tagarray = exreact_info($str , $open_tag , $close_tag);
[/code]
I hope that this could then give me something like
[code]
$tagarray[0] // info needed 1
$tagarray[1] // info needed 2
$tagarray[2] // info needed 3
[/code]
Then i need a function to put the info back into one string again as it was before but with the edited information, something like the following
[code]
$str = “blah blah blah [mytag] info needed 1 * edited [/mytag]blah blah blah[mytag]info needed 2 * edited [/mytag]blah blah blah[mytag]info needed 3 * edited [/mytag] blah blah blah”;
[/code]
Im not asking someone to make these functions for me, I wont mind if someone does but I would like to know how to go about it.

I first tried with explode and managed to get it kind of working but then found it was case sensitive and I need this to work with all variations eg [MyTaG] to work just like [mytag] etc

I hope this all makes sense I have been up all night trying to get this code Finished and I’m just about asleep now

[eves]

use str_replace to deal with variations of [mytag]
something like
[code]
$open_tag = "[mytag]";
$close_tag ="[/mytag]";
$str = "blah blah blah [mytag] info needed 1 [/mytag]blah blah blah[mytag]info needed 2[/mytag]blah blah blah[mytag]info needed 3[/mytag] blah blah blah";

$var_open = array('[MyTag]','[myTag]','[MYTAG]');// include other variations
$var_close = array('[/MyTag]','[/myTag]','[/MYTAG]');// include other variations

$limit = count($variations);
for($ctr=0;$ctr<$limit;$ctr++)
{
   $str = str_replace($variations[$ctr],$open_tag,$str);
   $str = str_replace($variations[$ctr],$close_tag,$str);
}  
[/code]

then use explode to separate into chunks, retrieve the text in between the tags
edit them, then use the implode function to join them up
something like:
[code]
$str_temp = explode('[mytag]',$str);
$ret_val = "";
$limit = count($str_temp);
for($ctr=0;$ctr<$limit;$ctr++)
{
    if (strpos($str_temp[$ctr],$close_tag)===false)
    {
        $ret_val .= $str_temp[$ctr];    
    }
    else
    {
        $tmp = explode($close_tag,$str_temp[$ctr]);
        $tmp[0] .= '(edited)'; // do your edit part here, $tmp[0] contains the text between the tags
        $ret_val .= $open_tag . implode($close_tag,$tmp); //join them up, append the open tag at the beginning
    }    
}
[/code]


hope that helps

[thehigherentity]

thanks for your quick reply on this

I never thought of that

I do have one question though

If i wanted to have many different tags and be able to extract them in this way is there any way I can go throught a string and lowercase anything between [ and ] ?

this would then fix all my problems :)

[thehigherentity]

I Thought I would let you all know how i fixed this problem, I made two functions one to extract the data.
[code]
function extract_from_tags($str, $open_tag, $close_tag){
    $findopenings = explode($open_tag, $str);
    foreach($findopenings as $find_closings){
        $taginfo = explode($close_tag, $find_closings);
        if (trim($taginfo[1]) == ""){
            $after_tag[] = $taginfo[0];
            $tag_info[] = " ";
        } else {
            $tag_info[] = $taginfo[0];
            $after_tag[] = $taginfo[1];        
        }
    }
    $str = array($tag_info, $after_tag);
    return $str;
}
[/code]

and one to place it back again

[code]
function replace_to_tags($tag_info, $outer_tag, $open_tag, $close_tag){
    $str = "";
    $info_count = count($tag_info);
    for ($i=0; $i<$info_count; $i++){
        if ($i == 0){
            if (trim($tag_info[$i]) == ""){
                $tag_first = false;
            } else {
                $tag_first = true;
            }
        }
        if ($tag_first = true){
            if (trim($tag_info[$i]) == ""){
                $str .= $tag_info[$i].$outer_tag[$i];
            } else {
                $str .= $open_tag.$tag_info[$i].$close_tag.$outer_tag[$i];            
            }
        } else {
            if (trim($tag_info[$i]) == ""){
                $str .= $outer_tag[$i].$tag_info[$i];
            } else {
                $str .= $outer_tag[$i].$open_tag.$tag_info[$i].$close_tag;            
            }        
        }
    }
    return $str;
}
[/code]

I know its far from perfect code but it seems to work but here is how it works


[code]
$str = "[MYTAG]INFO NEEDED 1[/mytag]between 1 and 2[mytag]info from tag 2[/MYTAG]BETWEEN 2 AND £[mytag]info from tag 3[/mytag]from the end";
$open_tag = "["; //  opening tag
$close_tag = "]"; // closing tag
[/code]

then call the function with

[code]
$str = extract_from_tags($str, $open_tag, $close_tag);
[/code]

this gives you a multidimensional array

all the info between the tags would be on
$str[0]

and the rest would be on

$str[1]
so you could call it like $str[1][1] or $str[1][2] etc
this means I can edit them and then place them back into the array and run the following

[code]
$tag_info = $str[0];
$outer_tag = $str[1];
Str = replace_to_tags($tag_info, $outer_tag, $open_tag, $close_tag);
[/code]

To get my desired output

I hope this helps anyone else that has a similar problem

It seems to of solved all my problems so far making it easy to extract what ever I want and place it back were it was before

Critics welcome, after all I’m only learning and as I said I know its far from perfect