3 replies to this topic

[Demonslay]

I'm trying to make a little way of splitting a tutorial into pages after being pulled form a database. So my solution is simple: make comments in the tutorial such as '<!-- PART 1 -->(Content)<!-- /PART 1-->', then using preg_match_all() to grab them and split them, and echo according to the page desired.

Problem is, I can't get preg_match_all to return anything. >.<

Here are a few things I've tried.

preg_match_all("|(<!-- PART) [^>]+ (-->)(.*)(<!-- /PART) [^>]+ (-->)|iU", $tutorial, $tutorial_data);

preg_match_all("|<(!-- PART) [^>]+ (--)>(.*)<(!-- /PART) [^>]+ (--)>|iU", $tutorial, $tutorial_data);

preg_match_all("|<(!--) [^>]+ (--)>(.*)<(!--) /[^>]+ (--)>|iU", $tutorial, $tutorial_data);

preg_match_all('#<\!-- (PART 1) -->(.*)<\!-- (/PART 1) -->#i', $tutorial, $tutorial_data);

And a few other variations.
I've gone basic for debugging, such as only doing the front tag and not the back, specifically putting a number instead of a regex bit for 'any number', etc, but when I use print_r(), this is what I get.

Array ( [0] => Array ( ) [1] => Array ( ) [2] => Array ( ) [3] => Array ( ) [4] => Array ( ) [5] => Array ( ) )

Empty arrays. :S

Can anyone help me a little? I just don't understand how it can be returning the fact that there are matches, but does not output any actual match data. I've experimented with this function a tad, and it does return the results, but not with what I'm trying to do.

And I've also tried using all flags that the function has available, and those only result in less data, such as one empty array, instead of an empty multi-dimensional array.

[BlazeForc3]

Instead of using a regular expression a much easier way would be to use the explode function.

$content = explode("[NEW_PAGE]", $tutorial); // Split the tutorial into pages
$pages = count($content); // Total Number of Pages

So this is how you would structure your tutorial:

Tutorial Text: Page 1[NEW_PAGE]Tutorial Text: Page 2

$content[0] would refer to page 1 of the tutorial, $content[1] would refer to page 2 and so on, this can get a bit confusing so we will correct it in our final script.

Assuming we take the tutorial contents from our database and store it in the variable $tutorial this is how the code would look:

$content = explode("[NEW_PAGE]", $tutorial); // Split the tutorial into pages
$pages = count($content); // Total Number of Pages

$number = $number - 1; // $number would be parsed through the URL (http://www.url.com/tutorials.php?id=1&number=2) and will refer to the page number we want to show

echo $content[$number]; // Display the content for the specified page

We subtracted 1 from the $number variable to make it less confusing since $content[0] is page 1, so when $number=1 it will actually call $content[0].

I've had some bad experiences with regular expressions so I try not to use them whenever possible.

Edited by BlazeForc3, 27 September 2006 - 12:14 AM.

[rc69]

It appears to me that you don't know what parantheses are used for. They're for capturing sub-patterns, not for putting around every word.

preg_match_all('#<!-- PART ([0-9]+) -->(.*?)<!-- /PART \\1 -->#i', $tutorial, $tutorial_data);

That should return something a little more useful. Of course, the explode thing doesn't sound like a bad idea.

If it were me, i would just make seperate files per page, and throw them into their own directory. Maybe make a generic tutorial.php file that would out put the title/page/section of the tutorial as well as it's contents.
i.e.

/* Output tutorial info... */
$tutorial = file_get_contents('tutorial_name/page'.$_GET['page'].'.txt');
echo $tutorial;
/* Links to next/prev page */

Edited by rc69, 27 September 2006 - 03:03 PM.

[Demonslay]

Lol rc, that is the exact string I used in one of my first attempts. It didn't give me anything at all...

I'll give it one more go though.
If I don't have any luck I'll try the explode way. I was thinking about using that just as I was walking home, lol.

Edit:
Gave another empty array, but the explode worked just great, thanks Blaze.

Edited by Demonslay, 27 September 2006 - 03:59 PM.