[RESOLVED] how to break words entered to one text box to variables?

onairric

hi guys,

can anybody tell me how to break words entered into one text box to variables?

For example, in one text box, you enter the following words:
[INDENT]First
Second
Third[/INDENT]
Once submitted, how do we break each of the words above into one variable each so it would look like:

// www.blah.com?textbox=first%second%third

$textbox = $_GET['textbox'];

// Break each word into a variable
$t1 = 'first';
$t2 ='second';
$t3 ='third';

Each word will be separated by a space (or a comma if you guys think this is better).

The form will either use GET or POST but for this instance i'm going to use GET.

I think i'm supposed to use explode() and foreach() but I don't know how. :glare:

Please help a newbie. Thanks in advance!

NogDog

Rather than separate scalar variables, you'd probably be better off breaking them up into elements of a single array variable. To do so, you could use preg_split() to break them up by any white-space characters:

$words = preg_split('/\s+/', trim($_GET['textbox']));
// view results:
printf("<pre>%s</pre>\n", print_r($words, 1));

Pooptart

or you could use explode.

http://www.tizag.com/phpT/php-string-explode.php

onairric

wow, the tutorial on the tizag site is so simple and so cool. i think ill stick w/ explode.
(http://www.tizag.com/phpT/php-string-explode.php)

one last thing, i'm going to enter each variable into one line each in a database using while()loop or foreach().

How would while()loop or foreach() automatically know when to stop looking for variables? [meaning how would while()loop or foreach() know how many words were entered in the text box?]

onairric

ei, nogdog, if you think what you posted is still better than explode(), can you tell me how to encode each word into each database entry?

thanks 'ya all. =p

NogDog

The advantage of the preg_split() solution I suggested is that it will treat any number of consecutive white-space characters (spaces, tabs, etc.) as a single delimiter, ensuring that you get no empty values if the user types in 2 or more spaces between words.

You can insert them into the DB with a single query:

$words = preg_split('/\s+/', trim($_GET['textbox']));
if(count($words))
{
   for($i = 0; $i < count($words); $i++)
   {
      $words[$i] = mysql_real_escape_string($words[$i]);
   }
   $sql = sprintf("INSERT INTO `table_name` (`column_name`) VALUES ('%s')",
                  implode("'), ('", $words));
   $result = mysql_query($sql) or die("Query failed ($sql): " . mysql_error());
}
else
{
    // no words were entered
}

onairric

man, nogdog, tnx for the help!