Parsing Character Datafile

silverthorn

Hi all. I am currently working on a new online game and currently using PHP for a number of small tasks (ie. email checking, character names, etc.). There is one thing I am still lacking is a way to check/exclude non-allowed character names:

When a new user signs up, and places a vulgar name
as part of his/her character name, it would be nice if PHP could read from a list (vulgar.txt) of 'bad names' and then return nay/yea for accepting the name and continuing with the application.

Anyone have any experience on how to do this? The script would need to check for $character then read/review the list for the input variable to make sure its not in the list (ie. michaelbtch, fckoff, etc).

-- M

theslinky

Okay, assuming vulgar.txt has bad words separated by the new line... i.e. like this:

f
bh
a**hole

Then this code should work:

$membername = "michaelb*tch"; // of course you'll set this by other means

$words = file("vulgar.txt");
for($i = 0; $i < sizeof($words); $i++) {
if(eregi($words[$i], $membername) {
print "invalid member";
break;
}
}

and of course you'll probably replace print "invalid member" with a function call or something like that.

anyway, hope this helps!
-sridhar

silverthorn

I tried the following in my file and it seems to just get skipped over:

$membername = $character; // character is from the form that is used.

$words = file("vulgar.txt");

for($i = 0; $i < sizeof($words); $i++) {
if(eregi($words[$i], $membername)) {
echo "
<p>
Print message here...
";
break;
}

}

Am I doing something wrong?

theslinky

Hi,

Are you making sure to separate your words using the newline? Meaning, only one word per line.

-sridhar

silverthorn

Yes. This is an except of the script in the main file of final.php

$membername = $character; // character is retrieved from the form input on the prior page.

$words = file("vulgar.txt");

for($i = 0; $i < sizeof($words); $i++) {
if(eregi($words[$i], $membername)) {
echo "
<P>
Sorry, but characters that have names like that are restricted from this
game as they can prelude to character harassment and violate our disclaimer
as well.<BR><BR>
Please <a href=index.html>review</a> the instructions again before attempting
to submit for a new character.<BR><BR>
</blockquote></blockquote>
";
break;
}

}

theslinky

Oh, i'm so sorry. I wrote the last code hastily. Here is a much more revised one (it works: i tested it :-)

<?php

$membername = $character;
$words = file("vulgar.txt");

$badname = false;

for($i = 0; $i < sizeof($words); $i++) {
$words[$i] = chop($words[$i]);
if(eregi($words[$i], $membername)) {
$badname = true;
break;
}
}

if($badname == true) {
print "Sorry, invalid";
}
else {
print "valid!";
}

Okay, basically if it find that they have a bad word, it sets the $badname flag as true. So once we break out of the for loop, we can see if the loop found a bad word (if badname == true). Else, its valid!

Please try it out and let me know. I'm sorry for the glitches in the previous code.

-sridhar

silverthorn

Yep. It worked! Thanks so much for the help.

-- M