how to implement shortcodes in pages or blog? - php

Question

I am using php framework laravel and I would like to implement shortcodes.
Does anyone have a suggestion how to go about implementing shortcodes that could be inserted by user into a page or blog post.
Example, lets say I would like to have a shortcode for gallery that has some images, something like
[gallery=id]
which would then display that particular gallery. Ofcourse I have gallery model and gallery & images tables.
My first thought is that I would have to scan the content of the page/post and look for shortcode and when I find a particular shortcode, then what? What do I insert instead of it?
I can't insert php code that loops through the gallery and produces output. I guess the best way to do it would be to run a function that returns complete html code that I insert instead of the shortcode.
Is it possible to return a view from a function and insert the result into a page/post?

Answer 1

Depending on what kind of "shortcode" you want, there are numerous options here:
Blade Directives
Blade Layouts
Blade Sub-Views
Blade Stacks

Answer 2

To be clear, I'm assuming you want to insert this into content blocks stored in a db or something, not in your exiting view files.
Assuming you want inject the text into your view for display, you could allow content creators to use a templating format like mustache (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustache_%28template_system%29) with server side callbacks/helpers/partials (in the view) to populate your own custom tags with dynamic content (gallery links in this case).
Main Points
I'd stick to a basic well known templating format like
mustache for this. In laravel, allow to Blade templating notation, it sounds like you want for this case to register a Blade::directive: https://www.laravel.com/docs/5.3/blade#service-injection.
I'd try to use an existing library if one such exists before
attempting to create your own short-tagging markup parsing /
callback paradigm. Blade has functions and methods handle such callbacks.
#2 is not necessary, but highly recommended, but #1 should be considered near religious.
UPDATE: as point out in other answers, Laravels built-in templating Blade, has this functionality, so stick to it's format and functionality.
Here's my suggestion (in pseudo-laravel/php):
Assume your marked up content from model pulled into the controller is in $content['blade_markedup_content' => 'here is my new gallery: #gallery(1)'] to be passed to the view.
Add a Blade directive #preprocess() to and in the template/view use <p>#preprocess($blade_markedup_content)</p> in place of just substituting raw <p>{{$blade_markedup_content}}</p>.
In the respective callback function for the #preprocess() directive
Instantiate a new $my_compiler = new BladeCompiler();
Register to this new blade compiler directives to handle the like #gallery(1) you put in your blade_markedup_content
return from the #preprocess() with $my_compiler->compileString($blade_markedup_content);
Viola... In theory, this should result in a parsed and substitute string from #preprocess($blade_markedup_content) in the original template.