Question

This is tailing off my other question which was successfully answered: stackoverflow.com/questions/8597929/need-to-create-li-with-list-of-different-links-using-php-explode-method

so now I have this:

<?php
$separator1 = "\n";
$separator2 = ":";
$textarea = get_custom_field('my_custom_output');
$array = explode($separator1,$textarea);
$output = ''; // initialize the variable
foreach ($array as $item) {
    list($item_text, $item_links) = explode($separator2, trim($item));
    $output .= '<li class="link-class"><a title="' . $item_text . '" href="http://mywebsite.com/' . $item_links . '">' . $item_text . '</a></li>';
}
?>

<ul>
<?php print $output; ?>
</ul>

and that, using the following in a textarea which is defined to “my_custom_output”:

text1:text1-page-url
text2:new-text2-page
text3:different-page-text3

and the result is

text1
text2
text3

which are successfully linked and styled. (i didnt make them links because stackoverflow doesn’t let me post more than two links because i only have 3 rep).

So my next and final desired task is to do this:

text1
description 1
text2
description 2
text3
description 3

where the text1 etc are linked like before but the descriptions are not linked.

So I will do my best, right here in stackoverflow, to try it. However, I expect I will need some help. Let’s go:

<?php
$separator1 = "\n";
$separator2 = ":";
$separator3 = ";";
$textarea = get_custom_field('my_custom_output');
$array = explode($separator1,$textarea);
$output = ''; // initialize the variable
foreach ($array as $item) {
    list($item_text, $item_links) = explode($separator2, trim($item));
    $output .= '<li class="link-class"><a title="' . $item_text . '" href="http://mywebsite.com/' . $item_links . '">' . $item_text . '</a><br /><span class="desc-class">' . $item_desc . '</span></li>';
}
?>

<ul>
<?php print $output; ?>
</ul>

and to use the following in the textarea which is is defined to “my_custom_output”:

text1:text1-page-url;Text1 Description
text2:new-text2-page;Description For Text2
text3:different-page-text3;A Text3 Description

and I need the output to be:

• text1

  Text1 Description

• text2

  Description For Text2

• ..etc

I don’t know if semicolon will work, but I can’t use a space (\s) because there are spaces in the description. I am open to suggestions.

====================================================

MY NEWEST TRY:

<?php
$separator1 = "\n";
$separator2 = ":";
$separator3 = ";";
$textarea = get_custom_field('my_custom_output');
$array = explode($separator1,$textarea);
$output = ''; // initialize the variable
foreach ($array as $item) {
    $itemarray = explode($separator2, trim($item));
    $item_text = $itemarray[0];
    list($item_links, $item_desc) = explode($separator3,$itemarray[1]);

    $output .= '<li class="link-class"><a title="' . $item_text . '" href="http://mywebsite.com/' . $item_links . '">' . $item_text . '</a><br /><span class="desc-class">' . $item_desc . '</span></li>';
}
?>

<ul>
<?php print $output; ?>
</ul>

IT WORKS!!! =D

Answer 1

Not sure if I understand this well enough (I’m not sure what get_custom_field() gets you – can’t find that as a regular PHP function), but when you explode an item that has multiple instances of the delimiter, you’ll get multiple arrays.

So:

$textarea = "text1:text1-page-url;Text1 Description";
$data = explode(':',$textarea);
// at this point $data[0] will contain "text1", while $data[1] contains text1-page-url;Text1 Description"
$descarray = explode(';',$data[1]);
// then $descarray[0] contains "text1-page-url" and $descarray[1] contains "Text1 Description" so you can echo this out however you like. 

To work with your code..
Assume each $item is each row at this point, like this:

$item = "text1:text1-page-url;Text1 Description";

Then this will do the trick:

foreach ($array as $item) {
    $itemarray = explode($separator2, trim($item));
    $item_text = $itemarray[0];
    list($item_links, $item_desc) = explode(';',$itemarray[1]);

    $output .= '<li class="link-class"><a title="' . $item_text . '" href="http://mywebsite.com/' . $item_links . '">' . $item_text . '</a><br /><span class="desc-class">' . $item_desc . '</span></li>';
}