Filtering text

PHP Coding Tutorials | Submited Apr 8, 2008

Written by:

- The code -

Of course, we'll start out with the opening <?php tags, and the first function.

<?php

function filterThese($string){ //Begin the function.

$badwords = array("hell", "damn", "fart"); //This is an array of the curse words, it's pretty simple, eh?

$filtered = str_replace($badwords, "[filtered]", $string); //This replaces the bad words in the array with text of your choice.

return $filtered; //Return the filtered text.
} //End the function.

$filteredText = filterThese($badword); //This calls the function

echo '$filteredText';

?>

- The Explanation -

function filterThese($string){

This opens the function that'll filter the bad words that you define in the array below.

$badwords = array("hell", "damn", "fart");

That's the array where you put whatever you want filtered. If you look, you can see a pattern: "word", "next word".
Use that pattern to add more words.

$filtered = str_replace($badwords, "[filtered]", $string);

$filtered is the variable for the filtered words, str_replace is a PHP function that replaces text; 'str' is short for 'string'. That's how I remember it, anyway.
First putting $badwords means that you want to replace whatever text was a part of THAT variable. Next comes [filtered], [filtered] is the word I just to replace $badwords with. $string is what we put at the beginning of the function, remember?

return $filtered;

This returns What you defined in the $filtered variable, where you replaced the text.

}

This, umm, ends the filterThese function.

$filteredText - filterThese($badword);

This creates a variable from the function, only instead of $string, we use $badwords. That makes sense, right?

echo '$filteredText';

This echos the filtered text. If you know anyything about PHP, you know what echo does.

[fin]

That's it. Hopefully you learned something, even if it wasn't what the tutorial was for. :)