Is this possible?

[nick2005]

Hi,

I wonder if you can help me with this question, I don't know if it is possible.

I co-edit a non-profit site about UK TV programmes and I wonder if in the descriptions of the programmes I could write a script that automatically links to key phrases to specific locations.

I.e if I have in a description the name of another programme that I have listed in the site, it links the words of the programme, to its programme page.

e.g

the description is: "this programme is a lot like 'Red Dwarf'" so it links the words 'Red Dwarf' to its programme page?

Is this possible??

Any help will be most appreciated, thanks.

[nemonoman]

It's extremely doable, and/but it will take a lot of care and thought to create the logic. You will probably want to use both database and PHP logic.

You'll store keywords in one table, keyword combos in a different table, and program(me)s in a third table.

You could then look through user input to see which if any keywords were input. Then with the keyword hits, look for best fit in the keyword combos, and return the program(me)s that those keywords point to.

These are many-to-many relationships, so you'll need some resolving tables, of course, like 'program_keywordcombo'.

Sounds pretty fun.

[nick2005]

nemonoman:

I've already got the programmes in a database 'progs' So I would need something to check through the text to find if any of the the names of the programmes are listed. Then use the 'id' of those programmes to link to:

show.php?prog_id=$prog_id

Any ideas how I could write the text that would check through the text for programme names?

[justsomeone]

Here's a simple outline of how to do it.

Load your "original" page text into a long string. Then load your known programme names and link urls into two arrays.

Now, cycle through the array of program names and search the text for it. If you find it, surround the name with the tags to create the link.

Finally, display the modified text.

if I had time, and i don't, I'd write the code for ya, but there's not much to it.

If you have thousands of TV programmes in your database, this may end up getting very slow. In this case, you might want to think about preparing all the pages in advance rather than on request.