Question

I’m normally pretty efficient at solving PHP problems all by myself, however with this specific problem I can’t seem to find a working solution.

I have a $string which consists of standard text, and in the text there will be certain keywords surrounded by [square brackets] which I want to convert to links, however it is not a simple case of comparing the string to a predefined array of ‘known’ keywords and doing a simple replace, because the contents of the [square brackets] could be anything.

For example I would need the following:

John Roberts is a jazz musician from Florida born in 1934. Some of his notable works include [A Gray Sky] and [Sophomore Effort].

Should be turned into the following:

John Roberts is a jazz musician from Florida born in 1934. Some of his notable works include <a href="search.php?search=a+gray+sky">A Gray Sky</a> and <a href="search.php?search=sophomore+effort">Sophomore Effort</a>.

It should be noted that:

• The $string will contain an unknown amount of [bracketed words].
• Using square brackets is not essential if it will cause problems, but for now it seems to me the most convenient method.

I’m not asking for someone to give me the code, all I need is someone to tell me what kind of PHP function I should be investigating and point me in the right direction!

Thank you all very much, and thank you Stackoverflow for giving me the chance to ask!

Answer 1

$string = "John Roberts is a jazz musician from Florida born in 1934. Some of his notable works include [A Gray Sky] and [Sophomore Effort].";

function rep_callback($match)
{
        $query = substr($match[0],1,-1);
        $query = urlencode($query);
        $link = '<a href="search.php?search='.$query.'">'.$match[0].'</a>';
        return $link;
}

echo $string."\n";
echo preg_replace_callback("/\[.+\]/U", "rep_callback", $string)."\n";

Output:

John Roberts is a jazz musician from Florida born in 1934. Some of his notable works include [A Gray Sky] and [Sophomore Effort].
John Roberts is a jazz musician from Florida born in 1934. Some of his notable works include <a href="search.php?search=A+Gray+Sky">[A Gray Sky]</a> and <a href="search.php?search=Sophomore+Effort">[Sophomore Effort]</a>.