PHP BBcode Parser

[thunderbox]

hey,

 

im making a website, its not a forum or anything like that but it does require the user of BBcode. i decided to use this because allowing the users to use html (like how myspace did) creates too many security risks and i like my design how it is so i am going to keep it

 

anyways. i want to know how i can implement BBcode on my page. i need all the basic functions.  does anyone have any areas of expertise here. ive looked at multiple tutorials but i get lost in them all . does anyone have a link to a good on?

 

thanx

[pocobueno1388]

all you need to do is use the function str_replace()

http://php.net/str_replace

 

That way you can display the users input from the database and replace any BBcode with HTML tags.

 

Say this is what the user submitted (and is what is stored in the database):

[b]Hello![/b] My name is ....

 

You could replace the and with HTML tags, like this:

 

<?php

$text = "[b]Hello![/b] My name is ....";

echo "<b>Before</b><br> $text<p>";

$search = array('[b]', '[/b]'); //add as many tags as you need
$replace   = array('<b>', '</b>');
$text  = str_replace($search, $replace, $text);

echo "<b>After</b><br> $text";

?>

 

 

 

 

 

[corbin]

Poco, can I ask about what you would do with:

 

[url]http://google.com/[/url]

 

You could use regular expressions to handle things like that...

 

$content = '[url=http://google.com]http://google.com[/url]';
$pattern = '/\[url\](.*)\[\/url\]/';
$replacement = '<a href="\\1" target="_blank">link</a>';
$content = preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $content);

[pocobueno1388]

Poco, can I ask about what you would do with:

 

[url]http://google.com/[/url]

 

You could use regular expressions to handle things like that...

 

$content = '[url=http://google.com]http://google.com[/url]';
$pattern = '/\[url\](.*)\[\/url\]/';
$replacement = '<a href="\\1" target="_blank">link</a>';
$content = preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $content);

 

Well...you basically just answered the question =P I would have probably been pretty stumped on that one though, I am terrible with regular expressions.

[thunderbox]

thanx guys. ill see if i can get it to work later tonight!

[thunderbox]

it worked thanks guys. however i want to apply this to 2 fields in my form, not just one. (About and Links). what is the easiest way to implement this. or do i jsut copy the function twice?

[pocobueno1388]

Just make the code into a function:

 

<?php

function bbcode($str){

   $search = array('[b]', '[/b]');
   $replace   = array('<b>', '</b>');
   $str  = str_replace($search, $replace, $str);

return $str;
}

?>

 

To use it, just call it like this:

<?php
   bbcode($text);
?>

 

[LuAn]

The solution posted by pocobueno1388 is fine if you can trust your users to use a closing tag every time they use an opening tag.  Oh wow!  A pig just flew by my window.  ;-)

 

Better to use a regex solution, like the one suggested by corbin, even for simple tags like bold tags.  That way you won't convert an opening BBCode tag to html unless there is a corresponding closing tag.