Getting PHP str_replace to work with Joomla - php

Question

As you may know, Joomla components enable you to override their output by copying their template files into your site template. Joomla components generally use helper files which cannot be overridden.
I have a helper.php file that includes the string:
$specific_fields_text = '<tr><td class="key">'.$specific_field_title.': </td><td class="kr_sidecol_subaddress">'.$specific_fields[$i]->text.' '.$specific_fields[$i]->description.'</td></tr>';
In my template override is the code:
<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">
<?php echo koparentHTML::getHTMLSpecificFields($this->specific_fields); ?>
</table>
The output is as follows:
<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td class="key">title</td>
<td class="kr_sidecol_subaddress">value</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="key">title</td>
<td class="kr_sidecol_subaddress">value</td>
</tr>
//.....etc......//
</table>
Basically I want to get rid of the table and turn it into a definition list but I cannot modify the helper.php file. I am thinking that the answer is to do with str_replace
I have tried using:
<dl>
<?php
$spec_fields = koparentHTML::getHTMLSpecificFields($this->specific_fields);
$spec_fields_dl = str_replace("<tr><td class='key'>'.$specific_field_title.': </td><td class='kr_sidecol_subaddress'>'.$specific_fields[$i]->text.' '.$specific_fields[$i]->description.'</td></tr>'", "<dt class='key'>'.$specific_field_title.': </dt><dd class='kr_sidecol_subaddress'>'.$specific_fields[$i]->text.' '.$specific_fields[$i]->description.'</dd>'", $spec_fields);
echo $spec_fields_dl;
?>
</dl>
This returns all of the text but with no html tags (no tr, td, dt, etc).

Answer 1

You can easily parse table data with PHP, like in this example:
$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc->loadHTML(koparentHTML::getHTMLSpecificFields($this->specific_fields));
$rows = $doc->getElementsByTagName('tr');
$data = array();
for ($i = 0; $i < $rows->length; $i++) {
$cols = $rows->item($i)->getElementsbyTagName("td");
$data[$cols->item(0)->nodeValue] = $data[$cols->item(1)->nodeValue];
}
var_dump $data;
This should convert your table into assoc array ('title' => 'value').
I hope it helps.

Answer 2

I have figured this out. For some reason the PHP bits such as '.$specific_field_title.' where stopping the str_replace from working. To get around this I just searched for the HTML elements and put them in an array like so:
echo str_replace(array('<tr><td class="key">', '</td><td class="kr_sidecol_subaddress">', '</td></tr>'),
array('<dt class="key">', '</dt><dd class="kr_sidecol_subaddress">', '</dd>'),
koparentHTML::getHTMLSpecificFields($this->specific_fields));
And now this works perfectly. Thank you to everyone who contributed.