How do I solve this with the least load?

[Anon]

Hi!

I am currently working with a guestbook. One of the features is that it should replace smileys with small happyface-icons. I am trying to find the most efficiant way to solve this. The problem is, the user should be able to disable this. So I want to solve this with as little severload as possbile. Two ideas:
1. Replace smileys and store the IMG tags in the DB, let a PHP script parse trough all messages and replace the IMG tags if the user has disabled them.
2. Parse trough while drawing up the GB and replace smileys with images. And don't do it if user has diabled it.

Can anyone come up with any better ideas? I don't feel any of these are very good.

Thanks!

[glowball]

Well if you're looking for the least server load, skip the database.

1. Make a separate file that contains one associative array. The items in this array will look something like this:

aSmileys = array("🙂"=>"smile1.gif", ";-)"=>"smile2.gif", ":-("=>"frown1.gif");

And so on.

2. Include this file wherever you need to translate smileys. You could translate the smileys when they post so the IMG tags are in the database, or you can translate the smileys when it is being displayed (meaning the ASCII smileys are in the database).

3. Loop through the array wherever you need to, replacing the key string for the value (surrounded by the IMG tag). Say you want to translate upon display and the body of the message is in $get['body']:

include "arrayFile.php";
$newStr = $get['body'];
$arrCnt = count($aSmileys);
while (list($key, $val) = each($aSmileys))
$newStr = str_replace($key, $val, $newStr);
echo $newStr;

Hope that helps! I would actually store the ASCII smiley in the database and translate upon display, just in case you want to change the IMG tag in the future (if you move directories or change from GIF to JPG or something, for example).