How to check if a word begins with 'x' in an array in php

Question

Foreground: I have this project I'm working on which uses email templates stored in database, each email body contain several shortcodes in the pattern {{$shortcode}} .

Problem: Currently there is an admin setting for changing email template body. During edit, I want to add a Hint Notice to the person making the edit displaying the allowed shortcodes.

E.g You are editing XYZ template, the allow shortcodes are {{$shortcode1}}, {{$shortcode2}}, and {{$shortcode3}}

What I Want to do: The website has several email template with varying shortcodes, and the templates are prone to be changed or new once added.

To avoid going to each template and listing out each shortcode it has, In the controller, I want to check for the shortcodes in the template, extract them and pass them into the view.

E.g

$message = 'Hello {{$first_name}}, you have requested to change your password, your reset link is {{$link}}';

$shortcodes = explode(' ', $message);

if I dd($shortcodes), I get this array

0 => "Hello"
  1 => "{{$first_name}},"
  2 => "you"
  3 => "have"
  4 => "requested"
  5 => "to"
  6 => "change"
  7 => "your"
  8 => "password,"
  9 => "your"
  10 => "reset"
  11 => "link"
  12 => "is"
  13 => "{{$link}}"

Now I want to get all the words starting with {{$ in the above array, is this possible ?

Shone Tow · Accepted Answer · 2022-07-09T13:33:19.703

1

Maybe you should use regular expressions here, like this:

$message = 'Hello {{$first_name}}, you have requested to change your password, your reset link is {{$link}}';
        
preg_match_all('/{{\$\w+}}/', $message, $matches);
        
dd($matches[0]);

/*
[
  0 => "{{$first_name}}"
  1 => "{{$link}}"
]
*/

edited Jul 09 '22 at 13:33

answered Jul 09 '22 at 11:04

Shone Tow

497
4
14

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 09 '22 at 11:01

You can use array_filter:

$result = array_filter($words, fn($word) => strpos($word, '{{$') === 0);

But perhaps using a regular expression on the email template's text would be a cleaner solution (e.g. with preg_match_all: https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.preg-match-all.php)

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 09 '22 at 11:04

$message = 'Hello {{$first_name}}, you have requested to change your password, your reset link is {{$link}}';

$shortcodes = explode(' ', $message);

foreach($shortcodes as $sc){
    if( ($sc[0] == "{") && ($sc[1] == "{")  && ($sc[2] == "$") ){
        echo $sc;   
    }
}

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 09 '22 at 11:11

0

Why no one uses the function made for this?

foreach($shortcodes as $word){
    if(str_starts_with($word, 'x')){
        ## CODE TO BE EXECUTED
    }
}

answered Jul 09 '22 at 11:11

M1001

144
1
11

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 09 '22 at 11:18

Please use this script:

<?php
function getShortCodes($string, $start, $end){
    $count = substr_count($string, $start);
    if ($count == 0) return [];
    $matchings = [];
    for($i = 0; $i <= $count; $i++){
        $string = ' ' . $string;
        $ini = strpos($string, $start);
        if ($ini == 0) continue;
        $ini += strlen($start);
        $len = strpos($string, $end, $ini) - $ini;
        $subStr = substr($string, $ini, $len);
        $matchings[] = $subStr;
        $string = str_replace('{{$'.$subStr.'}}',"",$string);
        
    }
    return $matchings;
}

$message = 'Hello {{$first_name}}, you have requested to change your password, your reset link is {{$link}}';

$parsed = getShortCodes($message, '{{$', '}}');

print_r($parsed);

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 09 '22 at 11:24

An easier solution would be to use preg_match_all()

$message = 'Hello {{$first_name}}, you have requested to change your password, your reset link is {{$link}}';
preg_match_all('/{{[^{]*}}/', $message, $matches);
var_dump($matches);
//array(1) {
//  [0]=>
//  array(2) {
//    [0]=>
//    string(15) "{{$first_name}}"
//    [1]=>
//    string(9) "{{$link}}"
//  }
//}

here is a jist

How to check if a word begins with 'x' in an array in php

6 Answers6