Formattiong User Input

[lisnaskea]

I have a form where users can enter information. I want them to be able to put in bullet points which will be formatted as an unordered list. I have seen this done by users simply entering:

• item 1
• item 2
• some more stuff

Which then gets parsed somehow into

<UL>
<LI>item 1</LI>
<LI>item 2</LI>
<LI>some more stuff</LI>
</UL>

Anyone have any ideas of where to start with this?

Thanks

Jamie Thompson

[mrskhris]

I think, simple str_replace would do.
str_replace("*","<li>",$your_string);

Sure, you can add more sophisticated pattern (like "replace every asterix positioned at the beginning of the line").

[reagent]

like this

$strText = "
this is some text
bullet one
bullet two
* bullet three
more text
";

print preg_replace("/^{\s*\s(.+)$/m",} "<li>\1</li>", $strText);

but i haven't figured out a way to put in the <ul></ul> tags yet

[reagent]

should have been

print preg_replace("/^{\s*\s(.+)$/m",} "&lt;li>\1&lt;/li>", $strText);

[lisnaskea]

Thanks for this. I really should learn at least <i>something</i> about regular expressions.

Will missing out the UL tags be ok? it seems ok in ie5 and netscape 4

[lisnaskea]

sorry to be a pain but could you show me how to do this in reverse. i.e. take the output of this and change it back to

• item1
• item2

with asterixs?

thanks

[reagent]

try this, the formatting may not come out on this board..

$strText = "
this is some text
bullet one
bullet two
*bullet three
more text";

$strNew = preg_replace("/^{\s*\s(.+)$/m",} "&gt;li>\1&gt;/li>", $strText);
print $strNew;

print preg_replace("/&gt;li>(.+?)&gt;\/li>/", "* \1", $strNew);

[reagent]

I hate how this board formats things, but i entered that wrong..

$strText = "
this is some text
bullet one
bullet two
*bullet three
more text";

$strNew = preg_replace("/^{\s*\s(.+)$/m",} "&lt;li>\1&lt;/li>", $strText);
print $strNew;

print preg_replace("/&lt;li>(.+?)&lt;\/li>/", "* \1", $strNew);