Question

here is my working php explode code for NON links:

<?php
            $textarea = get_custom_field('my_custom_output');
            $array = explode(',',$textarea);
            $output = ''; // initialize the variable
            foreach ($array as $item) {
               $item = trim($item); // clear off white-space
               $output .= '<li>' . $item . '</li>';
            }


?>

            <ul>
            <?php print $output; ?>
            </ul>

..and the code which defines “my_custom_output”, which I input into my textarea field:

text1,text2,text3,etc

..and the finished product:

• text1
• text2
• text3
• etc

So that works.
Now what I want to do is make text1 be a link to mywebsite.com/text1-page-url/

I was able to get this far:

<?php
            $textarea = get_custom_field('my_custom_output');
            $array = explode(',',$textarea);
            $output = ''; // initialize the variable
            foreach ($array as $item) {
               $item = trim($item); // clear off white-space
               $output .= '<li class="link-class"><a title="' . $item . '" href="http://mywebsite.com/' . $item_links . '">' . $item . '</a></li>';
            }


?>

            <ul>
            <?php print $output; ?>
            </ul>

Now, I would like $item_links to define just the rest of the url. For example:
I want to put input this into my textarea:

text1:text1-page-url,text2:new-text2-page,text3:different-page-text3

and have the output be this:

• text1
• text2
• ..etc (stackoverflow forced me to only have two links in this post because I only have 0 reputation)

another thing I want to do is change commas to new lines. I know the code for a new line is \n but I do not know how to swap it out. That way I can put this:

text1:text1-page-url
text2:new-text2-page
text3:different-page-text3

I hope I made this easy for you to understand. I am almost there, I am just stuck. Please help. Thank you!

Answer 1

Just split the $item inside your loop with explode():

<?php
$separator1 = "\n";
$separator2 = ":";
$textarea = get_custom_field('my_custom_output');
$array = explode($separator1,$textarea);
$output = ''; // initialize the variable
foreach ($array as $item) {
    list($item_text, $item_links) = explode($separator2, trim($item));
    $output .= '<li class="link-class"><a title="' . $item_text . '" href="http://mywebsite.com/' . $item_links . '">' . $item_text . '</a></li>';
}
?>

<ul>
<?php print $output; ?>
</ul>

And choose your string separators so $item_text, $item_links wouldn’t contain them.