Parsing custom tags

[GeXus]

Hello,

I'm building a very simple templating system, that will allow partners to create/edit custom templates. I want to include some dynamic tags such as a date format tags... which would look like

<tag:date format="m.d.y"/>

I'd then want to parse their template and look for this tag (among others)... and create a function to replace the tag with the appropriate date formatted as specified.

I was thinking of using XPath, however I found that when using DomDocument with LoadHTML or LoadXML that it was very particular about the formating and if it was messy code, it would not work.

Any suggestions for the best way parse out these custom tags? I would prefer not to use regex.

[halojoy]

there are many ways to do this

basically it is same way as forums software translate BBCode
you search for specific characters and combination of chars
then you replace it with something else

there are those who use [man]preg_replace[/man]
but also other use [man]str_replace[/man]
Other functions in this context are:
[man]strpos[/man], [man]stripos[/man], [man]strstr[/man]
and of course [man]substr[/man]

Here is an advanced BBCode parser using str_replace
corzblog.bbcode.parser.php

🙂

[GeXus]

Thanks, Yeah I think it's coming down to using preg_replace and str_replace... which is fine... Just thought it would be "cool" to use XPath....