Processing text in PHP finding a matching character - php

Question

How can I process text with some codes.
So suppose I have text as below
Hello {::first_name::} {::last_name::},
How are you?
Your organisation is {::organisation::}
For any text between {:: and ::} should be evaluated to get its value.
I tried exploding text to array using space as delimiter and then parsing array items to look for "{::" and if found get string between "{::" and "::}" and calling database to get this field value.
So basically these will be db fields.
Below is the code I have tried
$msg = "Hello {::first_name::} {::last_name::},
How are you?
Your organisation is {::organisation::}";
$msg_array = explode(" ", $msg);
foreach ($msg_array as $str) {
if (strpos($str, "{::") !== false) {
$field_str = get_string_between($str, "{::", "::}");
$field_value = $bean->$field_str; //Logic that gets the value of the field
$msgStr .= $field_value . " ";
} else {
$msgStr .= $str . " ";
}
}
function get_string_between($string, $start, $end)
{
$string = ' ' . $string;
$ini = strpos($string, $start);
if ($ini == 0) return '';
$ini += strlen($start);
$len = strpos($string, $end, $ini) - $ini;
return substr($string, $ini, $len);
}

Answer 1

Your script seems fine. Your script in fiddle
If you are looking for alternative way, you can try using preg_match_all() with str_replace(array, array, source)
<?php
$bean = new stdClass();
$bean->first_name = 'John';
$bean->last_name = 'Doe';
$bean->organisation = 'PHP Company';
$string = "Hello {::first_name::} {::last_name::}, How are you? Your organisation is {::organisation::}";
// find all placeholders
preg_match_all('/{::(.+?)::}/i', $string, $matches);
$placeholders = $matches[0];
//strings inside placeholders
$parts = $matches[1];
// return values from $bean by matching object property with strings inside placeholders
$replacements = array_map(function($value) use ($bean) {
// use trim() to remove unexpected space
return $bean->{trim($value)};
}, $parts);
echo $newstring = str_replace($placeholders, $replacements, $string);
Short format:
$string = "Hello {::first_name::} {::last_name::}, How are you? Your organisation is {::organisation::}";
preg_match_all('/{::(.+?)::}/i', $string, $matches);
$replacements = array_map(function($value) use ($bean) {
return $bean->{trim($value)};
}, $matches[1]);
echo str_replace($matches[0], $replacements, $string);
And if you prefer to use a function:
function holder_replace($string, $source = null) {
if (is_object($source)) {
preg_match_all('/{::(.+?)::}/i', $string, $matches);
$replacements = array_map(function($value) use ($source) {
return (property_exists(trim($value), 'source')) ? $source->{trim($value)} : $value;
}, $matches[1]);
return str_replace($matches[0], $replacements, $string);
}
return $string;
};
echo holder_replace($string, $bean);
OUTPUT:
Hello John Doe, How are you? Your organisation is PHP Company
fiddle

Answer 2

Or you can simply use str_replace function:
$data = "{:: string ::}";
echo str_replace("::}", "",str_replace("{::", "", $data));