Question

I have a MySQL field called “tags” an example result. The single field has a list of text with comma separated values.

A real example:

red, pants, shoes, heels, lookbook

I want to somehow use find and replace or implode feature to print out this row as separate links.

My guess so far:

<?php
$tag=$row["tags"];
whilst (!$tag=="") { 
echo '<a href="/tags/$tag">$tag</a>, "';
}
?>

Answer 1

1. split the comma separated list into an array using explode()
2. convert each element in the list to a link using foreach
3. convert the array to a comma separated list using implode()

example:

$tags = explode(", ", $row["tags"]);
foreach ($tags as &$tag) {
    $tag = "<a href=\"/tags/$tag\">$tag</a>";
}
echo implode(", ", $tags);

Another approach would be using preg_replace:

$row['tags'] = "banana, apple, peach, strawberry";
echo preg_replace( '#([^,\s]+)#is', 
       '<a href="/tags/$1">$1</a>', 
       $row['tags']);