LinuxOnly

Preg_match_all & str_replace

Instead of relying on preg_replace_callback, we can also do the matching and replacing ourselves. In this method, we first search all placeholders, determine what to replace them with and then replace all of them. This method is slightly less efficient and elegant than the preg_replace_callback method.

To search for all placeholder patterns, we use the following code:

preg_match_all('/{([^}]*)}/', $template, $matches);

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => {planet}
            [1] => {name}
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => planet
            [1] => name
        )

)

To determine the replacement string, we step through $matches[1] and put the original string and the replacement string in an array. We then pass that array to str_replace, in a form that it can understand:

$data = array('planet' => 'World', 'name' => 'Wiebe');
$template = 'Hello {planet}. My name is {name}.';

preg_match_all('/{([^}]*)}/', $template, $matches);
foreach ($matches[1] as $key)
{
        $replacements['{'.$key.'}'] = $data[$key];
}
echo str_replace(array_keys($replacements), array_values($replacements), $template);