simple pattern matching 1

[kpdvx]

I want to add emoticon functionality to my text posting area. I want to replace with in image of a wink with a smile, etc. How would i go about doing this?

 

[sleipnir214]

I'd use the preg_replace function with search and replace arrays.

Fill the $search array with all your emoticons. Keep in mind that a lot of the characters used in emoticons are metacharacters and will have to be escaped with the backslash character.

Fill the $replace array elements with all the HTML code necessary to make the image appropriate for each emoticon show up on a web pages.

If you invoke &quot;<input> = preg_replace ($search, $replace, <input>)&quot;, the function will search the input for each element in $search. If it finds it, it will replace it with the respective element in $replace.

 

[kpdvx]

k, currently i display the text by doing an include:
include('my_text.txt')

How would i parse this included text, or would i have to &quot;include&quot; it a different way?

 

[sleipnir214]

Instead of including it, open the file and parse it.

Or preparse the text before writing it to the file. This might be even better -- that way the parse only has to happen once, regardless of how many times the file is served.

 

[kpdvx]

explain how i would open it and parse it please. btw, the txt files are uploaded via ftp, so preparsing isnt an option.

 

[sleipnir214]

#initialize your search and replace arrays

$search = array (&quot;&quot;, &quot;&quot;
$replace = array (&quot;

http://www.foo.bar/images/smile.gif&quot;,

&quot;

http://www.foo.bar/images/wink.gif&quot;);

#open the file, read it one line at a time, replace the emoticon shorthands with links, output

$myfilehandle = fopen (&quot;<my file>&quot;, &quot;r&quot or die (&quot;Could not open file&quot;

while ($stringfromfile = fgets ($myfilehandle))
{
$stringfromfile = preg_replace ($search, $replace, $stringfromfile);

print $stringfromfile;
}

fclose ($myfilehandle);

 

[sleipnir214]

Correction:

Replace:

$search = array (&quot;&quot;, &quot;&quot;

With

$search = array (&quot;:\)&quot;, &quot;;\)&quot;