php search and replace

Question

I am trying to create a database field merge into a document (rtf) using php

i.e if I have a document that starts

Dear Sir,

Customer Name: [customer_name], Date of order: [order_date]

After retrieving the appropriate database record I can use a simple search and replace to insert the database field into the right place.

So far so good.

I would however like to have a little more control over the data before it is replaced. For example I may wish to Title Case it, or convert a delimited string into a list with carriage returns.

I would therefore like to be able to add extra formatting commands to the field to be replaced. e.g.

Dear Sir,

Customer Name: [customer_name, TC], Date of order: [order_date, Y/M/D]

There may be more than one formatting command per field.

Is there a way that I can now search for these strings? The format of the strings is not set in stone, so if I have to change the format then I can.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Mitch Dempsey · Accepted Answer · 2010-05-06 17:27:17Z

1

You could use a templating system like Smarty, that might make your life easier, as you can do {$customer_name|ucwords} or actually put PHP code in your email template.

answered May 6, 2010 at 17:27

Mitch Dempsey

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2 Comments

Dave Over a year ago

That sound like the sort of functionality I require, but I'm not outputting the document, but putting it back into a rtf editor. Are there any classes that would do this?

Josh Over a year ago

You could use smarty with output buffering.

Josh · Accepted Answer · 2010-05-06 20:20:53Z

0

Try a RegEx and preg_replace_callback:

function replace_param($matches)
{
  $parts = explode(',',$matches[0]);
  //$parts now contains an array like: customer_name,TC,SE,YMD
  // do some substitutions and:
  return $text;
}
preg_replace_callback('/\[([^\]]+)\]/','replace_param',$rtf);

edited May 6, 2010 at 20:20

answered May 6, 2010 at 17:58

Josh

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4 Comments

Dave Over a year ago

Josh, thanks, that looks really interesting, and the sort of thing that I was after. Will this parse the whole file finding multiple matches, or will I have to do some sort of looping?

Josh Over a year ago

I believe that will find every match calling replace_param() on each one.

Dave Over a year ago

Thanks, I've given it a test and it works well. I got an error to start with and found that I needed to use forward slashes around the regex i.e. preg_replace_callback('/[([^]]+)\/]','replace_param',$rtf);

Josh Over a year ago

That was a silly mistake on my part, sorry! I've corrected my answer.

SoLoGHoST · Accepted Answer · 2010-05-06 17:30:37Z

0

You can use explode on it to separate them into array values.

For Example:

$customer_name = 'customer_name, TC';
$get_fields = explode(',', $customer_name);

foreach($get_fields as $value)
{
  $new_val = trim($value);
  // Now do whatever you want to these in here.
}

Sorry if I'm not understanding you.

answered May 6, 2010 at 17:30

SoLoGHoST

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1 Comment

Dave Over a year ago

my problem is I don't know what to explode as it will change dynamically, I may have 'customer_name, TC' or 'customer_name, UC' or something completely different. I was wondering whether I could search for some sort of matching brackets?

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