Complicated String Replace

[mctoys]

Hi Guys

 

I'm sure this is really simple for you experts but it's proving to be my nemesis! I have an array of words: eg.

 

$words = array('Apples','Bananas','Cherries');

 

and would like to search a string of text for these words and create link tags around them based on a simple template, <a href="#">$word_found</a>

 

$text = "I love eating apples and bananas but hate cherries!";

 

So i would like to return a string like this:

 

$text = "I love eating <a href=#>apples</a> and <a href="#">bananas</a> but hate <a href="#">cherries!</a>";

 

Now, I need it to do a case insensitive search, but just wrap tags around the words it finds, leaving the case as it was found in the string. I want to avoid using a function where I have to list all the replacements like this:

 

function replace_text($text){

    $replace = array('apples' => '<a href="#">apples</a>','bananas' => '<a href="#">bananas</a>');

    $text = str_ireplace(array_keys($replace), $replace, $text);

    return $text;

}

 

because it seems very messy and long winded. Also it's not case insensitive.

 

It seems like there must be a way of simply searching for the words in my array and wrapping tags around the found words.

 

Please can anyone help!?

 

Many Thanks

Dan

[mctoys]

Hmm Ok - so no immediate replies - maybe I'm asking the wrong questions!

 

So i've been playing around with the script and would be happy to use the str_replace method if I can dynamically populate the array which handles the keywords and tags. Here is what I have:

 

<?php

 

$words = array('Ben','Tim','John');

$text = 'Me and my friends John Tim and Ben went to the park.';

$replace = array();

 

foreach($words as $word) {

array_push($replace[$word], "<a href=\"#\">".$word."</a>");

}

 

    $newtext = str_replace(array_keys($replace), $replace, $text);

 

?>

 

The problem is, my array_push doesn't work, it outputs this:

 

Array

(

    [ben] =>

    [Tim] =>

    [John] =>

)

 

Me and my friends  and  went to the park.

 

Any ideas?

[PFMaBiSmAd]

You can use preg_replace to do this. The following can be modified to do what you are asking -

 

<?php
$str = "this is my test string and string is very long with so many words";
$search = "my|string|with|words";
$str = preg_replace("/($search)/is","<a href='/index.php?word=$1'>$1</a>",$str);
echo $str;
?>

 

$search in the above can be produced by imploding your $words array using the '|' character.

[mctoys]

You can use preg_replace to do this. The following can be modified to do what you are asking -

 

<?php
$str = "this is my test string and string is very long with so many words";
$search = "my|string|with|words";
$str = preg_replace("/($search)/is","<a href='/index.php?word=$1'>$1</a>",$str);
echo $str;
?>

 

$search in the above can be produced by imploding your $words array using the '|' character.

 

Oh wow - that's a thousand times easier than what I was trying to do!!

Thanks so much!!