Question

I have an array called $featuresSEO that has a number of words in it like:

Array (
    [0] => Japan 
    [1] => Japanese 
    [2] => Tokyo 
    [3] => Yokohama 
    [4] => Osaka 
    [5] => Asian 
    [6] => Nagoya 
) 

I then have a string like follows:

 Searching the |*-*| Dating membership database is the key to locating |*-*| people
 you would be interested in. You can search for |*-*| Singles including |*-*| Women
 and |*-*| Men in any location worldwide. Join now to search for |*-*| Singles.

I’ve been trying to replace the instances of |*-*| with random words from the Array. I’ve tried str_replace() but couldn’t get the random aspect working.

Can someone push me in the right direction?

thx

Answer 1

The code for replace-only-first-match is borrowed from here. The following code uses each word from the list only once:

$wordlist = array(
    'Japan',
    'Japanese',
    'Tokyo',
    'Yokohama',
    'Osaka',
    'Asian',
    'Nagoya'
);
$string = "
Searching the |*-*| Dating membership database is the key to locating |*-*| people
you would be interested in. You can search for |*-*| Singles including |*-*| Women
and |*-*| Men in any location worldwide. Join now to search for |*-*| Singles.
";
$replace = '|*-*|';
while(true){
    $index = strpos($string, $replace);
    if($index === false){
        // ran out of place holder strings
        break;
    }
    if(count($wordlist) == 0){
        // ran out of words
        break;
    }
    $word = array_splice($wordlist, rand(0, count($wordlist) - 1), 1);
    $string = substr_replace($string, $word[0], $index, strlen($replace));
}
echo $string;