Content formatting toolbar

dsunmedia · July 21st, 2004, 12:39 PM

Does anyone know of a link to a script or tutorial I can use to add text formatting buttons like the ones used on this forum to a content input application page? Currently anything I input is rinsed through the htmlspecialchars() function where any HTML formating is neutralized into a string.

Thanks for your help.

Snib · July 21st, 2004, 01:51 PM

Do you want the buttons that dynamically add the tags, or do you want the server code that makes the tags work?

I'm assuming the server code, because you're asking in the PHP section....

This is what I do: allow users to use tags like this forum does ([i],[b], etc.) and then use this code:

Code:

//get what the user is trying to post
$message = $_POST['message'];

//convert line breaks
$message = nl2br($message); 

$arr_html = Array("<",">");

$arr_conv_html = Array("&lt;","&gt;");

//replace html with escaped version
$message = str_replace($arr_html,$arr_conv_html,$message);

$bracketcode = Array("[b]","[i]","[u]");

$HTMLcode = Array("<b>","<i>","[u]");

//replace bracket code with html
$message = str_replace($bracketcode,$HTMLcode,$message);

//insert the message into the database here

HTH,

Snib

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dsunmedia · August 12th, 2004, 02:43 PM

These forums are quite helpful. Now for some more of that help... :)

QUESTION 1 :)

I've setup the BBcode functions to format my text without inputting harmful values into the database. Now I'd like some help with the button toolbar that dynamically adds the BB tags into the textarea. I'd like my article compose toolbar to be very similar to the Format section of the one used on these forums. It works great!

Here's a quick summary of the BB system I've pieced together (from Chapter 12 and 15 of Beginning PHP, Apache, MySQL):

1) I created the 'forum_bbcode' table from Chap.15 in my database.

2) I added the function below to my 'outputfunctions.php' file.

function bbcode($data) {
  $sql = "SELECT * FROM forum_bbcode";
  $result = mysql_query($sql);
  if (mysql_num_rows($result) > 0) {
    while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
      $bbcode['tpl'][] =
        "Â§" . html_entity_decode($row['template'],ENT_QUOTES). "Â§i";
      $bbcode['rep'][] =
        html_entity_decode($row['replacement'],ENT_QUOTES);
    }
    $data1 = preg_replace($bbcode['tpl'],$bbcode['rep'],$data);
    $count = 1;
    while (($data1 != $data) and ($count < 4)) {
      $count++;
      $data = $data1;
      $data1 = preg_replace($bbcode['tpl'],$bbcode['rep'],$data);
    }
  }

  return $data;
}

3) I changed the article story output code to: echo bbcode(nl2br(htmlspecialchars($row['body']))); from: echo nl2br(htmlspecialchars($row['body'])); , where applicable.

4) I also manually added: \[b\]([^[]+?)\[/b\] and <b>$1</b> to the table so that it replaces the BBcode with HTML. The result is a working BBcode setup!

QUESTION 2 :D

I'd also like to know where I can find more PCRE expressions like the bold one above and the ones in p. 547 of the textbook.

In your debt.

richard.york · August 12th, 2004, 04:15 PM

I've recommended it before, and here it is again ;)...

I personally like the HTML_BBCodeParser package offered in PEAR. I was fooling around with this about a week ago and I liked how it made sure that all of the tags were closed and nested correctly, in other words it didn't just replace the BBCode markup, it made sure it was properly nested and all of that as well. I found it also was rather easy to fork with my own custom BB code syntax. In fact I modified the package rather painlessly to produce markup that uses all CSS, where appropriate, is accessible and is XHTML compliant.

If you want that package go to:
http://pear.php.net/HTML_BBCodeParser

It saved me the trouble of having to come up with complex regular expressions on my own. If you'd like to have a peek at the source code of my modified version of that package and the JS that I use to apply the BBCode, drop me an email and I'll send you the source code. In fact the JS that I used was based largely on the Snitz JS used in this forum, it was very easy to optimize and customize. I just copied their libraries and made some modifications to reduce the amount of code necessary and wrapped it in PHP so that it is abstracted and easily applied to any textarea field.

Regards,
Rich

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