Trying to convert a string to 'english'?

austingecko

I pull a string from the database looking like this:

$string = "location%5B%5D=Alabama-Tuscaloosa&location%5B%5D=Georgia-Atlanta&food%5B%5D=pizza";

What I want to do is print a sentence like:
Your search includes the Alabama-Tuscaloosa and Georgia-Atlanta areas, and topics concerning pizza.

I tried foreach, but I guess the string is not an array, though it looks like it with %5B%5D ([]). (?)

Sometimes the string will include multiple locations, one location, or no locations. Same with the topic, there may be multiple topics, one topic, or no topics. So, unfortunately, I can't just cut off x number of characters to get the info I want to display.

Thanks in advance for any help. 🙂

austingecko

This is what I try to do (the output isn't exactly what I want, but it would get me there), but it doesn't work. I assume it doesn't work because I really do not have an array(?):

   	   	foreach ($string as $key=>$value)
		      {
		         if ($key == "location")
			      {
      			foreach ($value as $two_dim_value)
				      {
			         $output .= "$key='$two_dim_value' ";									
   				   }
			      $agent .= ")";
			      }
		         elseif ($key == "food")
      			{
			      foreach ($value as $two_dim_value)
				      {
				      $output .= "$key='$two_dim_value' ";
				      }
   		      }
		      }
   		   echo $output

(OT: ugh, I shouldn't bother using PHP code thingy in vbulletin. That looks horrible.)

Weedpacket

Well, no don't you have an array. You can treat a string like a 0-indexed array, but only for individual characters. You need to write something that will actually parse the string.

Use explode('&',$string) to get an array of key=value pairs.

For each $element of that array, go

list($key,$value)=explode('=',$element);
$querystring[]=array(urldecode($key),urldecode($element));

Then all the bits will be in the $querystring array, indexed starting from 0:

$querystring[0]=array('location[]','Alabama-Tuscaloosa');

Then do further manipulation with the $quertystring array to taste.

austingecko

Thanks Weedpacket , you really helped out!

One last question for anyone else:
I want to print 'location[]' as location and , oddly, when I try preg_replace, ereg_replace, or $substr_replace to remove '[]' I cannot --- the entire string is deleted.

Any ideas for removing [] ?
Thanks

Weedpacket

Originally posted by austingecko
Any ideas for removing [] ?
Thanks

$string=str_replace('[]','',$string)?