problem with custom tags

Anon

I have a script that uses custom markup to place code for Javascript tooltips. The user enters text in a form, and has access to complex code through the use of simple tags. Entries are stored in a MySQL database. The tags work like this:

[term=test]test[/term]

[def=test]This is a test[/def]

[term][/term] is the link for the tooltip, and [def][/def] is the content of the tooltip.

The code looks like this:

$entry = ereg_replace( "[term=([-./a-zA-Z0-9!&%#?,'=:~]+)]". "([-./a-zA-Z0-9 !&%#?,'=:~]+)[/term]", "<a href=\"#\" class=\"defn\" onMouseOut=\"MM_showHideLayers('\1','','hide')\" onMouseOver=\"makeVis('\1',event);\">\2</a>", $entry);
$entry = ereg_replace ("[def=([-./a-zA-Z0-9!&%#?,'=:~]+)]". "([-./a-zA-Z0-9 !&%#?,'=:~]+)[/def]", "<div id=\"\1\" style=\"border-width: 2px; border-style: inset; border-color: black; position: absolute; background-color: $popup_bgcolor; padding: 2; layer-background-color: $popup_bgcolor; visibility: hidden; width: 177px; overflow: visible\">\2</div>", $entry);

Here's my problem. When a user edits an entry, I don't want them to see all this ugly Javascript -- I want the entry text to convert back to the custom tags. How do I do it? I've been going crazy with regex and the like, and any help would be greatly appreciated.

Anon

Well, you could write a regex that does the reverse of what you've done here, but that'd be ugly. Psersonally I'd suggest that instead of storing this information in your users text you only store the custom tags and then store this information in another table (I'm assuming that you don't want to generate this on the fly but on insert). Use the message ID and the term as the key for this new table and then do a replace on the text at view time.

This saves you the regex everytime the page is viewed, but costs you another database call and a string replace at view time.

I've done something like this on my page (not yet running). My page pulls definations from a database and compaires defined words to words in the text, then converts any defined words it finds into the appropriate java script. Unfortunatly this is a kind of slow process for a large page and you can see for yourself here (www.liquidcode.net/article/1). The way I've done this though doesn't allow the user to generate his/her own definations they are stuck with the ones that I've put in my dictionary.

preston_stone

Good answer. I managed to solve the problem by reversing the regex/eregi_replace, and it was ugly, but it worked (the problem was that I had a prior ereg_replace that swapped out the single quote (') for ASCII, so eregi_replace wasn't seeing a match). Your answer is better though, and cleaner. I'll give it a try.

Anon

Good luck, I hope you get it working the way you want.

And I thought I was the only one to come up with the idea of using overlib to give difinations to words. ;->

Anon

Ohh yeah I forgot, if you are interested I also wrote a plugin for phorum (the message board that phpbuilder uses) that incorporates the dictionary functions. If you want it you can get it at www.liquidcode.net/dictionary/. You can get the phourm message board software at www.phorum.org. The plugin was written for version 3.3.