Replacing words in form input

Anon

Hi there, I am trying to replace the information from a user inputted form, with information that has been checked with a table in a database. If there are words in the user inputed form that are in the database, then the words in the form will get links put on them automatically to the words in the database. Below is what I have so far (with the help of some others), it all seems to work but does not return the link, only the text. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

//Automatically find words that are in dictionary and replace them with links in the form input

function DictEncode($forminput){
$formwords = preg_replace("/[^{[:alnum:]|[:space:]]/","",$forminput);}
$wordarray = explode(" ",$formwords);

//Connect to database and find words
$db=mysql_connect("localhost","name","pass");
mysql_select_db("database",$db);

$query = "SELECT * FROM dict WHERE word IN ('".implode("', '", $wordarray)."');";
$myresult = mysql_query($query);

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($myresult)) {
	$forminput = preg_replace("/([\s\.,])".$row["word"]."([\s\.,])/","\\1<a href='home.php?m_column_id=php_dict/result.php?word=".$row["word"]."'>".$row["word"]."</a>\\2",$forminput); 
}
return $forminput;

}

Anon

I did this same thing not to long ago, as a plugin to Phorum (the message board that phpbuilder uses). Here is what I did.

Once I'd gotten an array of all of my found words I looped through them building the link around the word (I used overlib.js instead of actual links). Then I used substr_replace() to replace the word in the original text. If you want to see how it works you can go to: http://www.liquidcode.net/article/1

My site isn't active yet, but you can see how my code works here using just an article, and if you go to the message boards you can see how it works there as a plugin.

If you want I'll send you the entire class that I use but it's a bit large for posting here.

Below is the loop section of my code, it should be fairly readable.

  for ($i = 0; $i < count($found); $i++) {
     $replace = $this->expandMacro("id",
                                   $this->defs[strtoupper($found[$i])],
                                   $this->link_start);
     $def_name = strtoupper($found[$i])."-def";
     $replace = $this->expandMacro("def",
                                   addslashes(
                                      $this->stripPunct(stripslashes(
                                         $this->defs[$def_name]), "\"")),
                                   $replace);
     $caption = "Definition: $found[$i]";
     $replace = $this->expandMacro("caption",
                                   $caption,
                                   $replace);
     $replace .= $found[$i] . $this->link_end;
     $start = strpos($txt, $found[$i], $offset);
     $end = strlen($found[$i]);
     $offset = $start + strlen($replace);
     $txt = substr_replace($txt, $replace, $start, $end);
     }

Anon

Hi Rob, thanks for your reply. Here is what I have so far with your help, but not sure if I'm doing this right or not. I get an error "Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in...." Think it was something to do with what you have as "id", not sure what that is, I thought it was the fields in the db, but I renamed it to my field names and still didn't work. Maybe I will need you entire class, cause I am not sure if I'm doing it right. Thanks for your help again... Here is what I wrote.

//Start of function that automatically finds words that are in the dictionary and replaces them with links in the form input

function DictEncode($forminput){

//Take form input and convert it into an array of words
$formwords = preg_replace("/[^{[:alnum:]|[:space:]]/","",$forminput);}
$wordarray = explode(" ",$formwords);

//Connect to database and find words in the dictionary that match words in the above array
$db=mysql_connect("localhost","name","pass");
mysql_select_db("database",$db);
$query = "SELECT * FROM dict WHERE word IN ('".implode("', '", $wordarray)."');";
$myresult = mysql_query($query);

//Go through the results of the word matching and change the word into a link and resave it as the new form input

//Puts content from mySQL into an array called found
while ($found[] = mysql_fetch_array($myresult)) {
// nothing!
}
mysql_free_result($myresult);

for ($i = 0; $i < count($found); $i++) {
     $replace = $this->expandMacro("id",
                                   $this->defs[strtoupper($found[$i])],
                                   $this->link_start);
     $def_name = strtoupper($found[$i])."-def";
     $replace = $this->expandMacro("def",
                                   addslashes(
                                      $this->stripPunct(stripslashes(
                                         $this->defs[$def_name]), "\"")),
                                   $replace);
     $caption = "Definition: $found[$i]";
     $replace = $this->expandMacro("caption",
                                   $caption,
                                   $replace);
     $replace .= $found[$i] . $this->link_end;
     $start = strpos($txt, $found[$i], $offset);
     $end = strlen($found[$i]);
     $offset = $start + strlen($replace);
     $txt = substr_replace($txt, $replace, $start, $end);

// }