Username Generation

Anon

I have found a nifty piece of java that takes a full name and turns it into a username by stripping it down

i.e Bob Jones -> b.jones

Does Anyone know how this can be done in PHP as the script I found isn't ideal as you have to click in another text box for this to be done.

I would like to try adding a random 3 digit number at the end as well.

Thanks in advance.

Anon

Ummm it's simply a matter of taking in the value of the full name and parsing out the pieces and putting them back together the way you want... simple text manipulation... that is unless your talking about real time updating on the same form as the fullname is inputted on which isn't the way php works. We'll just go with the 1st one since the second one is almost imposible without using some sort of client side script to query the php script and update the value in which case you might as well just do the whole thin in java/javascript.

~form.html~
<form method=post action="post.php">
<input type="text" name="fullname"><br>
<input type="submit">
</form>

~post.php~
<?php
$array = explode(" ", $fullname);
$username = strtolower($array[0][0].'.'.$array[1].rand(0,999));
?>

Anon

Brilliant !

Thats exactly what I needed.

Next green question. Say they only had one name(e.g. a company name) - how would you suggest I handled that?

Anon

Glad to be of service. 🙂

Well I guess the easiest methood would be to check the array to see how many strings are in it after the explode() function then act apon it. But why just stop with only checking for 1 entry, why not set up a reusable function to handle multiple entries.

~function.php~
<?php
function CreateUsername($fullname)
{
$array = explode(" ", $fullname);
if(count($array)==1)
$string = $array[0];
else
{
for($i=0;$i=count($array);$i++)
{
if(!$i) //if first entry only use first letter.
$string .= $array[$i][0];
else
$string .= '.'.$array[$i];
}
}
$string .= rand(0,999);
return $string;
}
?>

Of course if you've never worked with functions before I should probably give a brief example of how to use this within a script. It's pretty simple, but I know what it's like to be a newbie 🙂

~form.html~
<form method=post action="post.php">
<input type="text" name="name"><br>
<input type="submit">
</form>

~post.php~
<?php
include("function.php")
$username = CreateUsername($name);
echo 'Your username is "'.$username.'"';
?>

This is a great way to handle things if you want to be able to use this name generator in several scripts. 🙂

Anon

Shaun,

Seems great - apart from it fell over!

FATAL: erealloc(): Unable to allocate 5873633 bytes

Is it caught in a loop?

I called it exactly as you suggested and not being too switch on with explode etc yet, i can't work out why.

Anon

Awww shite, sorry bad me... put in an '=' when I shoulda put in a '<' symbol in one of the if statements... guess thats what I get when I write code with my 8mo old son sitting on my lap trying to eat my keyboard <Grinz>

Anyways here's the working code.

~post.php~
<?php
function CreateUsername($fullname)
{
$array = explode(" ", $fullname);
if(count($array)==1)
$string = $array[0];
else
{
//This was the offending line, sorry. 🙂
for($i=0;$i<count($array);$i++)
{
if(!$i) //if first entry only use first letter.
$string .= $array[$i][0];
else
$string .= '.'.$array[$i];
}
}
$string .= rand(0,999);
return $string;
}

Anon

Cool, that works very well !

And I know all about kids 'n' keyboards, have to wash mine often when sticky fingers get on it!

Cheers for your help Shaun - great stuff!