Question

I have thousands of PHP pages which have a header and footer included using php, like

<?php include("header.php"); ?> //STATIC CONTENT HERE  <?php include("footer.php"); ?>

I want to implement auto keyword linking for certain keywords in the static text. But I can only add PHP codes to my header or footer files.

Answer 1

This can be a complex operation. The steps:

1. Get all the files whose words you want to replace (glob)
2. Specify an array (or arrays) for the "find" and "replace" criteria
3. Iterate over the files returned by glob replacing the text as you go (preg_replace)
4. Write the new text (file_put_contents)

This sample code replaces all words in the $words array with a link to http://www.wordlink.com/<yourword>. If you need a different link for each word you’ll need to specify $replace as an array using $1 where you want the searched word to appear in the replacement (and change $replace in the regex to $replace[$i]).

Also, the glob function below looks for all html files in the specified $filesDir directory. If you need something different you’re going to have to manually edit the glob path yourself. Finally, the regular expression used only replaces whole words. i.e. if you wanted to replace the word super, the word superman will not have the word super replaced in the middle.

Oh, and the replace is NOT case sensitive as per the i modifier at the end of the pattern.

// specify where your static html files live
$filesDir = '/path/to/my/html/files/';

// specify where to save your updated files
$newDir   = '/location/of/new/files/';

// get an array of all the static html files in $filesDir
$fileList = glob("$filesDir/*.html");

$words    = array('super', 'awesome');
$replace  = '<a href="http://www.wordlink.com/$1">$1</a>';

// iterate over the html files.
for ($i=0; $i < count($fileList); $i++) {
  $filePath = $filesDir . $fileList[$i];
  $newPath  = $newDir . $fileList[$i];
  
  $html     = file_get_contents($filePath);
  $pattern  = '#\b(' . str_replace('#', '\#', $words[$i]) . ')\b#i';
  $html     = preg_replace($pattern, $replace, $html);
  file_put_contents($newPath, $html);
  echo "$newpath file written\n";
}

Obviously, you need write-access to the new folder location. I would not recommend overwriting your original files. Translation:

Always backup before doing anything crazy.

P.S. the regexes are not UTF-8 safe, so if you’re dealing with international characters you’ll need to edit the regex pattern as well.

P.P.S. I’m really being kind here because SO is not a code-for-free site. Don’t even think about commenting something like "it doesn’t work" when I try it 🙂 If it doesn’t fit your specifications, feel free to peruse the php manual for the functions involved.