Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Programming Discussion : PHP: Variable as part of a text string

[mylinear]

The data in a text field of a MySQL table is literally as follows:
The sky is $color

The data is read into a variable called $text.

<?php
print $text;
?>
will output: The sky is $color

Is it possible to somehow treat the $color as a variable and parse it to output a value? For example:
<?php
$color = "blue";
prit $text; // can something be done here?
?>
to get the output: The sky is blue

Or can the data in the text field be stored in some other way to get the desired output? Maybe with additional quotes around $color or something?

[tiamak]

simply use str_replace/preg_replace function

[tanfwc]

<?

$color = 'blue';
$text = "The sky is ".$color.".";
print $text;
?>

Is this something you are looking at?

[mylinear]

Originally Posted by tiamak

simply use str_replace/preg_replace function

So I have to find the $color in the text field and replace it with "blue" and only then print out the text?

Isn't there a way for PHP to do it automatically? For example:
<?php
$color = "blue";
$text = "The sky is $color";
print $text;
?>
will print out: The sky is blue

I was trying to do something like that, except in this case the $text content is read from a text field from a MySQL table which has the data The sky is $color

[mylinear]

Originally Posted by tanfwc

[code]<?
Is this something you are looking at?

Are you suggesting that I put
"The sky is ".$color."."
as the data in the table text field itself? I tried that but it did not work. It will print out exactly as the above, without converting $color to blue.

[tiamak]

Originally Posted by mylinear

Isn't there a way for PHP to do it automatically? For example:
<?php
$color = "blue";
$text = "The sky is $color";
print $text;
?>
will print out: The sky is blue

I was trying to do something like that, except in this case the $text content is read from a text field from a MySQL table which has the data The sky is $color

well and thats the problem it wont work when u output string from db.
u need to use *replace function

[mylinear]

Thanks to tiamak and tanfwc for the help.

[tiamak]

u may also do replacement in sql query

PHP Code:

$color='blue';
mysql_query('select replace(field_name, "$color", "'.$color.'") FROM table WHERE ....'); 


[Burhan]

Or you can do this :

PHP Code:

$color = 'red';
$string = "The sky is $color";
eval('echo $string;'); 


But be warned, eval can lead to security problems in your code.