Question

I have this simple string:

echo ucwords("<row><cell><chars class='subHeader'><value>how much time do you spend</value></chars></cell></row>");

But its outputting like so:

<row>
<cell>
<chars Class="subHeader">
<value>how Much Time Do You Spend</value>
</chars>
</cell>
</row>

Answer 1

As long as your HTML is that simple like in the input, specifically being US-ASCII encoded and not containing any CDATA sections, this might work:

$str = "<row><cell><chars class='subHeader'><value>how much time do you spend</value></chars></cell></row>";

$str = str_replace('>', '> ', $str);
$str = ucwords($str);
$str = str_replace('> ', '>', $str);

echo $str;

This does work because > is a reserved character in HTML. Adding a space after each will make ucwords to work as documented. After ucwords has done it’s job, the change is reverted.

However this might bring you into problems if > sequences existed earlier which will be removed as well. So take care.