RE: [PHP] variable placeholders in a text file

On Mon, 31 Dec 2012 19:59:02, Ashley Sheridan wrote: _______________________________ > > On Mon, 2012-12-31 at 13:39 -0600, Nelson Green wrote:   > My question is, is there another way to do something similar, such as > embedding a variable name directly into the text file? In other words, > instead of my text file reading: > > Hello USER ... > > Can I do something like this: > > Hello $user_name ... > > and then write my function to replace $user_name with the passed > parameter prior to printing? > > > You could use an existing templating solution, like Smarty, although > for what you want to do it might be overkill. A few str_replace() calls > shouldn't produce too much overhead, but it depends on the size of the > text string in question. > > You could try eval() on the block of text, but if you do, be really > careful about what text you're using. I wouldn't recommend this if > you're using any text supplied by a user. As a last option, you could > have the text stored as separate parts which you join together in one > string later. This might be less expensive in terms of processing power > required, but it also makes maintenance more of a hassle later. > > > Thanks, > Ash > http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk Hi Ash, Yep, smarty would be way more than I need right now. I'm just dabbling with various things, trying to learn more about PHP. And my first thought was to split the components, which worked fine. Then I tried a HEREDOC which did allow variable substitution. This attempt is a move up from that, trying to generalize things a bit more. My input will be 100% generated by me, but in the back of my mind I'm looking towards the ability to use user supplied strings.