Question

Which PHP Str Function to Use For This....

Asked by: gwkg

A funciton in Wordpress is returning this

<p>Local Buiness Name<br />
148 Main Stt<br />
Philadelphia, PA<br />
Center City<br />
(215)555-0123<br />
companywebsite.com</p>

What is the appropriate function to use to cut out what is in bold

<br />
(215)555-0123<br />
companywebsite.com

And only leave

<p>Local Buiness Name<br />
148 Main St<br />
Philadelphia, PA<br />
Center City</p>

The actual data will be different each time so I can't use anything that counts the characters.

Should I use explode() at the <br /> tags and then rebuild the output from the pieces or is there a way to chop off everything at the 4th <br /> ?  

I'd like to choose based on execution speed, if possible.

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Asked On
2009-07-21 at 11:17:49ID24588417
Tags

php

Topic

PHP and Databases

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
8

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Answers

 

by: CABISPosted on 2009-07-21 at 11:55:43ID: 24908006

I think your best bet is to do as you suggested yourself... use explode() with <br /> as your delimiter then create a new string from the array. Should be very fast and low overhead. Don't forget to add back the final "</p>"

$str = "<p>Local Buiness Name<br />148 Main Stt<br />Philadelphia, PA<br />Center City<br />(215)555-0123<br />companywebsite.com</p>";

$arr = explode("<br />", $str );

$newstr = $arr[0] . "</br>" . $arr[1] . "</br>" . $arr[2] . "</br>" . $arr[3] . "</p>" ;

 

by: dhiraj05Posted on 2009-07-21 at 12:02:50ID: 24908061

if you are using PHP later than 4, use strrpos - this will give the last index of string

int lastIndxOfBr = strrpos ($string, "<br/>");
$string = substr ($string, 0, $lastIndxOfBr) + "<p>";

                                              
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by: gwkgPosted on 2009-07-21 at 13:53:11ID: 24909217

@dhiraj05: thanks, except that its not the last <br /> I need the pos of, its the 2nd to last <br /> .  Theres 5 <br /> tags, I want to lose the 4th one and everything after it.

@CABUS: thats pretty much what I have now, thanks for confirming its speed

$pieces = explode("<br />",$text);
for($i=0;$i<4;$i++)
        $excerpt .= $pieces[$i]."<br />";
return $excerpt;

i'll leave it open for the night and award the points in the morning.


 

by: dhiraj05Posted on 2009-07-21 at 14:01:38ID: 24909302

to get the 4th one, it can be repeated twice, 

int lastIndxOfBr = strrpos ($string, "<br/>");
$string = substr ($string, 0, $lastIndxOfBr);
lastIndxOfBr = strrpos ($string, "<br/>");
$string = substr ($string, 0, $lastIndxOfBr) + "</p>";
 
//and the lines can be combined to avoid the step of 
//assigning the variable
 
$string = substr ($string, 0, strrpos ($string, "<br/>"));
$string = substr ($string, 0, strrpos ($string, "<br/>")) + "</p>;
                                              
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by: Ray_PaseurPosted on 2009-07-21 at 16:48:22ID: 24910434

Not exactly sure of the format of your data.  For example, do you have anything that might look like this (note there are more lines in the address and the <BR> tag is slightly different, but equally valid):

<p>Local Buiness Name<br />
148 Main St<br />
Suite 105<br/>
Philadelphia, PA<br />
Center City<br />
(215)555-0123<br />
companywebsite.com</p>

Other things you might want to consider is what the data will look like with the phone number or web site omitted.  If you get a NULL placeholder for these, all is OK, but if you get something like this, it would not be so easy to get the parsing correct

<p>Local Buiness Name<br />
148 Main St<br />
Philadelphia, PA<br />
Center City<br />
companywebsite.com</p>

This code snippet teaches an easy way to deal with some of the issues.  As far as speed goes, you do not even need to think about it.  Any difference in parsing techniques will be invisible in the cosmic scheme of things that make up a PHP page load - you're talking microseconds in a world of milliseconds.

best regards, ~Ray

<?php // RAY_temp_gwkg.php
error_reporting(E_ALL);
 
// TEST DATA, SLIGHTLY CHANGED FROM THE ORIGINAL POST
$str = "
<p>Local Buiness Name<br />
148 Main St<br />
Suite 105<br/>
Philadelphia, PA<br />
Center City<br />
(215)555-0123<br    />
companywebsite.com</p>";
 
// COPY AND MODIFY THE TEST DATA
$new = $str;
 
// STANDARDIZE THE VARIATIONS ON THE 'BREAK' TAG
$new = str_replace('<br', '<BR', $new);
$new = ereg_replace("<BR *", '<BR', $new);
$new = str_replace('<BR/>', '<br/>', $new);
 
// EXPLODE THE STRING INTO AN ARRAY
$arr = explode('<br/>', $new);
// var_dump($arr); // ACTIVATE THIS TO SEE THE ARRAY
 
// HOW MANY LINES OF ADDRESS ARE PRESENT? REMOVE THE LAST TWO - PHONE AND WEB SITE
$kount = count($arr)-1;
unset($arr[$kount], $arr[$kount-1]);
 
// RECONSTRUCT THE PARAGRAPH
$par = implode('<br/>', $arr) . '</p>';
 
// SHOW THE RESULTS
echo "<pre>";;
echo htmlentities($par);
                                              
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by: gwkgPosted on 2009-07-23 at 09:15:32ID: 31606056

Thanks everyone! I didn't know about var_dump (was using print_r) nor strrpos before this question, and will use unset in my new function =)

 

by: Ray_PaseurPosted on 2009-07-23 at 09:16:31ID: 24926936

Thanks for the points - it's a good questions. ~Ray

 

by: dhiraj05Posted on 2009-07-23 at 09:20:44ID: 24926976

Thanks for the points... :)

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