Replace within text

Anon

I want to have a question use a previously entered answer stored in a mySQL db. Let's say in question 1, the user entered "dog". In question 3, I want to have it set up so it says "What color is your [insert answer from question 1]?"

My thought is to have question 3 stored as "What color is your [q1]?" I would need to extract whatever is between the [ ], perform the query (select * from table where answer = q1) and then insert the result into the question, without the brackets. Any help as to the best way to do that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

jbauer23

A simply way is to use the contatenation operator "." Once the value of the answer is in the variable $q1, simply do the following:

$question = "What color is your " . $q1 . "?";

Anon

Thanks for the reply. The problem is that not all questions are going to have variables in them. So that's why I need to first check to see if it is a dynamic question (check to see if it contains [ ]) and then if it does, get the variable and perform the query to determine the correct value.

cordex

$delimiter1_in = strpos($question_st, "[");
$delimiter2_in = strpos($question_st, "]");
if($delimiter1_in && $delimiter2_in)
{
$var_st = substr($question_st, $delimiter1_in+1, ($delimiter2_in-$delimiter1_in-1));
echo "The question is dynamic and the variable is $var_st<BR>";
}
else
echo "The question is not dynamic<BR>";

Replacing the variable with whatever value you pull down can be accomplished via str_replace (or ereg_replace, eregi_replace, preg_replace and probably a dozen other methods).

jbauer23

Allright then, you can use a regular expression to check for this. This code is kind of confusing, but I'll explain it below.

if(ereg("[.+]",$q3)
{
// Get previous answers from DB ($q1 contains answer to Question 1)
$q1 = "cat";

$q3 = "What color is your [q1]?";

$q3 = ereg_replace("[(.+)]","\$\1",$q3);
eval("\$q3 = \"$q3\";");
}

First, you need to put the previous answers into an associative array so you can get their values easily. Then, the ereg_replace does most of the dirty work. It finds the brackets, and puts whatever is inside them into the \1 variable. It then replaces the brackets with the literal "$q1".

Now, $q3 is "What color is your $q1?". Then, you need to evaluate the new string to insert the value of $q1. After this code, $q3 contains "What color is your cat?".

Let me know if this is more along the lines of what you are trying to do...