Here's my problem. I have a textarea in my form, where users can submit youtube video links . I need to parse the text and replace the youtube link with their embed equivalents. an example:
Initial URL in text: "blah blah http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLs5HN7FS0w blah blah" Final text before storing in mysql db: "blah blah [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLs5HN7FS0w] blah blah"
Any idea how to do this for every link in the textbox with php?
Use regular expressions:
$target = 'blah blah http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLs5HN7FS0w blah blah';
$target = preg_replace('/(http:\/\/www\.youtube[^ ]*)/', '[youtube=$1]', $target);
This matches everything that starts with http://www.youtube and does not contain spaces, and captures it into $1. Then it replaces the matched part with [youtube=$1] where $1 is the URL
I'd go for a slightly more complex regExp, to be a bit safer and to drop all extra YT params that you don't really need (and users will paste them, you can bet on that):
$url = 'blabla http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6CyoYSlL-M&feature=rec-LGOUT-exp_stronger_r2-2r-26-HM aaaa bbb ccc';
echo preg_replace('|http://www\.youtube\.com/watch\?.*\bv=([^&]+)[^\s]*|', '[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=$1]', $url);
Also this BBcode shouldn't really require this "http://www.youtube..." part of the url, it's always the same ?!
I got slightly bored, and came up with a ridiculously clunky, though relatively simple and functional, jQuery means of doing this:
$('form').submit(
function() {
var text = $('#text').val().split(' ');
for (i = 0; i < text.length; i++) {
var test = text[i].indexOf('http://www.youtube.com/watch');
if (test != -1) {
text[i] = '[youtube=' + text[i] + ']';
}
}
text = text.join(' ').trim();
$('#text').val(text);
return false;
});
Edited to add a necessary sanity check to the function:
$('form').submit(
function() {
var text = $('#text').val().split(' ');
for (i = 0; i < text.length; i++) {
var test = text[i].indexOf('http://www.youtube.com/watch');
var check = text[i].indexOf('[youtube=');
if (test != -1 && check == -1) {
text[i] = '[youtube=' + text[i] + ']';
}
}
text = text.join(' ').trim();
$('#text').val(text);
return false;
});
JS Fiddle of sanity-checking demo.
Basically, in the first function it was possible to simply keep re-submitting the form and prepending '[youtube=' and appending a closing ']'. This latter approach absolves me of some of the stupidity. OF course I could have just checked the the indexOf() value of 'test' is equal to 0, so it was at the beginning of the string. Which I might do, if I revisit this.
Edited because, sometimes, I just can't leave things be...
$('form').submit(
function() {
var text = $('#text').val().split(' ');
for (i = 0; i < text.length; i++) {
var test = text[i].indexOf('http://www.youtube.com/watch');
if (test === 0) {
text[i] = '[youtube=' + text[i] + ']';
}
}
text = text.join(' ').trim();
$('#text').val(text);
return false;
});
$text = $_POST['text']; // from the textarea of name="text"
$text = explode(" ",$text);
for ($i=0; $i < count($text); $i++) {
if (stripos($text[$i], 'http://www.youtube.com/watch') === 0) {
$text[$i] = '[youtube=' . $text[$i] . ']';
}
}
$text = implode(" ",$text);
I don't know of anywhere that hosts php demos publically, and safely, so I can't demo this, but I think it should work. Although using a foreach() might well have been easier than a for() loop.
