Version: 1
Type: Function
Category: Databases
License: GNU General Public License
Description: I searched for a day to find an example of running some PHP that is embedded in the middle of a string that was read from a database. I couldn’t find anything, so I wrote this instead!
What it does is find any occurances of <?php blah; ?> in a string, pull out the php code, run it and shove the result of the php back in the string.
Restrictions on usage (tech not legal!) are:
. The php must be a single function call;
. The function must return its output, not print it.
For example, I’ve used it on a dynamic web site that’s essentially text article based. The articles are in a database and sometimes the writers need to link to other articles.
Originally, they just hand wrote the <A> links, but that lost the context variables when the users followed the links (the site doesn’t use cookies). Now the authors use “<?php link_article(article_id, “channel name”, “link text”); ?>” instead, and the context variables are passed on the links.
function pre_process_body($arg_body)
{
while(eregi('(.+)<?php (.+) ?>(.+)', $arg_body, $arr_body))
{
$php = '$tmp = '.$arr_body[2];
if(substr($php,-1,1) != ';')
{
$php .= ';';
}
eval($php);
$arg_body = $arr_body[1].$tmp.$arr_body[3];
}
return($arg_body);
}
function link_article($arg_art_id, $arg_chan, $arg_linktext)
{
$ret = '<A HREF="'.$arg_chan.'/topic.php3';
$ret .= context_vars();
$ret .= 'art_id='.rawurlencode($arg_art_id);
$ret .= '">';
$ret .= $arg_linktext.'</A>';
return($ret);
}
