Question

I’m trying to give each textarea a name so I can use them later to send back to the database.
With this code I got some weird results and I guess its because I use str_replace.

Here’s the code:

$description2 = mysql_result($product, 0, 'productDescription2');
$totalteknisk = preg_match_all('/x(a|b|d|e)/', $description2, $matches);
$searchArray = array('xa', 'xb', 'xc', 'xd', 'xe');

if ($description2 !=""){
for($z=1;$z <= $totalteknisk; $z++){
$xa = '<textarea name="'. $z .'" style="background-color:#FFFFFF;resize: none; height: 20px; width: 200px;">';
$z++;
$xb ='</textarea><textarea name="'. $z .'" style="background-color:#FFFFFF;resize: none; height: 20px; width: 200px;">';
$z++;
$xc = '</textarea><br>';
$xd = '<textarea name="'. $z .'" style="background-color:#EAF2D3;resize: none; height: 20px; width: 200px;">';
$z++;
$xe = '</textarea><textarea name="'. $z .'" style="background-color:#EAF2D3;resize: none; height: 20px; width: 200px;">';
$replaceArray = array($xa, $xb, $xc, $xd, $xe);
$teknisk .=  str_replace($searchArray, $replaceArray, $description2);   
}                               
}

Example string from database xa1xb2xcxd3xe4xcxa5xb6xc(description2)

As you can see I’m trying to just loop it all and give it a value 1 to $totalteknisk.

I’m open for suggestions on how I can make this work.

Answer 1

I solved it a bit differently, by using preg_replace_callback(…)

$description2 = 'xa1xb2xcxd3xe4xcxa5xb6xc';

$html = preg_replace_callback('/x(?:a|b|c|d|e)/', function($match) {
    static $count;

    $count++;

    switch($match[0]) {
        case 'xa':
            return "<textarea name=\"$count\" style=\"background-color:#FFFFFF;resize: none; height: 20px; width: 200px;\">";
        case 'xb':
            return "</textarea><textarea name=\"$count\" style=\"background-color:#FFFFFF;resize: none; height: 20px; width: 200px;\">";
        case 'xc':
            return "</textarea><br />";
        case 'xd':
            return "<textarea name=\"$count\" style=\"background-color:#EAF2D3;resize: none; height: 20px; width: 200px;\">";
        case 'xe':
            return "</textarea><textarea name=\"$count\" style=\"background-color:#EAF2D3;resize: none; height: 20px; width: 200px;\">";
    }
}, $description2);

$teknisk .= $html;

I would also suggest, that you dont use only numbers for the ‘name’ attribute in the textareas. You may should consider using another name, like fields[$count] and then refer to it by $_POST['fields'] ...