Is there a php function that mimics the " " behavior? - php

Question

i'm trying to create a table view helper in Zend Framework , it takes an array of models and generate an html table that displays the model properties.
The user can add extra columns to display operations like update ,delete models ,.
so the user can add a string like that
$columnContent = '<a href=\'update/$item[id]\'>update</a>' ;
note that i use simple quotes to cache the string to be evaluated later
my problem is , is there a way to evaluate that string in a context , later on ?
so i need to mimic the " " behavior of strings in Php , thanks.
something like :
// in the context , where $item is a row of an array of models :
$myVar = evaluatemyString($columnContent);
EDIT :
i'm not looking for the eval function which doesnt work in my case , ( i think ).
EDIT 2 :
i need to put the result of the in a variable too.

Answer 1

The eval function in PHP
eval($columnContent);

Answer 2

Use "templates" (the quotes are intended) instead. Have a look at intl, especially messageformatter. Also there are the good old printf()-functions (inlcuding sprintf() and so on)

Answer 3

Here is a simple UTF-8 safe string interpolation example. The regular expression forces variables with the following rules:
Prefixed with #
object:property notation (denotes an associative array key "object" whose value is also an associative array)
In other words, instead of variables like: $item[id]
You will have variables like: #user:id
<?php
// update
//$template = 'update';
// update
$template = 'update';
// fixture data
$db[499] = array('user' => array('id' => 499));
$db[500] = array('user' => array('id' => 500));
// select record w/ ID = 500
$context = $db[500];
// string interpolation
$merged = preg_replace_callback('/#(?:(?P<object>[^:]+):)(?P<property>[\w][\w\d]*){1}/iu', function($matches) use($context) {
$object = $matches['object'];
$property = $matches['property'];
return isset($context[$object][$property])
? $context[$object][$property]
: $matches[0];
}, $template);
echo "TEMPLATE: ${template}", PHP_EOL;
echo "MERGED : ${merged}", PHP_EOL;