Parsing a template

onlinegs

Okay, I have a question for you guys (yes, again).

I am designing a newscript where you can change the layout of script (using HTML). Now within this HTML there are variable pointers ($data) where the information data should be put. The template is stored in the MySQL database, and is pulled out into a var (lets call it $templateVar). Now what I need it to do is when I print out the $templateVar, it needs to automatically fill in each of the vairables with the data they contain (which is also pulled from the database).

I was woundering if anybody had any suggestions on how to go about doing this.

TIA, Bryce

Mordecai

Your template could look something like this:
<html><body>This is a {1} of the template {2}.</body></html>

Obviously, these could be filled in with "test" and "system," respectively.

What I would recommend doing is using ereg_replace() to change the value of these:
ereg_replace("{1}","$var1",$templateVar);

onlinegs

hey, thanks, never though of using ereg_replace()

That should do the trick.

x3ro

better yet - create an associative array of variables to use as data to fill your template (this can come from the database).

then do something like this to pull in all the data:

$text = preg_replace ('/\{([^}]+)\}/e', 'doReplace(\'\\1\');', $text;

// where the func looks like this:

function doReplace ($repVarName)
{
   global $repVars;

   if (isset ($repVars[$repVarName])
   {
      return $repVars[$repVarName];
   }
   else
   {
      return '';
   }
}

.. then once youve got that going, you can get really funky and start merging in sub-templates and setting up your own control structures 😉