Implementation of PHP profanity filter

Question

Possible Duplicate:
How do you implement a good profanity filter?

I have an iPhone app that passes a string through a URL to my php script, which then inserts to my database. I'd like to write some php code that reads $body for any pre-defined profanity.

Right now, I only have the following code, but it only looks for exact matches, not if $body contains, then.. type of a sequence. Also, I need it to replace the swear with a blank " ", removing the word all together.

if($body == "swear word") 
    return;

eliah · Accepted Answer · 2010-09-13T18:27:00.853

2

$swears = array("shoot", "darn", "heck");

foreach ($swears as $bad_word)
    $body = str_replace($bad_word, " ", $body);

This will work as a quick-and-dirty solution, although it does have the Scunthorpe Problem (e.g. "heckler" will get transformed to "ler" if "heck" is on your profanity list).

edited Sep 13 '10 at 18:27

answered Sep 13 '10 at 18:20

eliah

2,267
1
21
23

1

This is a [clbuttic mistake](http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Clbuttic-Mistake-.aspx) ;) – Daniel Vandersluis Sep 13 '10 at 18:27
True enough. Edited in something to that effect. – eliah Sep 13 '10 at 18:29
Yes, I'm aware of the Scunthorpe Problem. How can you make the array case insensitive? – BigMike Sep 13 '10 at 18:36
Use `str_ireplace` instead of `str_replace` if you want to match case-insensitively. – eliah Sep 13 '10 at 18:44

Implementation of PHP profanity filter

1 Answers1