Simple BBCode To HTML Function In PHP

While working on a “secret” project I needed a simple BBCode to HTML converter. I’m sure there are a number of them out there, but I wanted to build my own. Here it is, a quick and dirty regex filled function.

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function bbc2html($content) {
  $content = preg_replace('/(\[b\])(.*?)(\[\/b\])/','<strong>$2</strong>',$content);
  $content = preg_replace('/(\[i\])(.*?)(\[\/i\])/','<em>$2</em>',$content);
  $content = preg_replace('/(\[u\])(.*?)(\[\/u\])/','<u>$2</u>',$content);
  $content = preg_replace('/(\[ul\])(.*?)(\[\/ul\])/','<ul>$2</ul>',$content);
  $content = preg_replace('/(\[li\])(.*?)(\[\/li\])/','<li>$2</li>',$content);
  $content = preg_replace('/(\[url=)(.*?)(\])(.*?)(\[\/url\])/','<a href="$2" target="_blank">$4</a>',$content);
  $content = preg_replace('/(\[url\])(.*?)(\[\/url\])/','<a href="$2" target="_blank">$2</a>',$content);
  return $content;
}

In other news this is post #99 since I started the blog. Here’s to hoping #100 is stellar.

Update (01/23/07)
I just realized that PHP lets you use arrays in preg_replace, so a ‘better’ version would be…

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function bbc2html($content) {
  $search = array (
    '/(\[b\])(.*?)(\[\/b\])/',
    '/(\[i\])(.*?)(\[\/i\])/',
    '/(\[u\])(.*?)(\[\/u\])/',
    '/(\[ul\])(.*?)(\[\/ul\])/',
    '/(\[li\])(.*?)(\[\/li\])/',
    '/(\[url=)(.*?)(\])(.*?)(\[\/url\])/',
    '/(\[url\])(.*?)(\[\/url\])/'
  );
 
  $replace = array (
    '<strong>$2</strong>',
    '<em>$2</em>',
    '<u>$2</u>',
    '<ul>$2</ul>',
    '<li>$2</li>',
    '<a href="$2" target="_blank">$4</a>',
    '<a href="$2" target="_blank">$2</a>'
  );
 
  return preg_replace($search, $replace, $content);
}
Posted January 22nd, 2007 - Permalink
Categories: PHP - Programming - Snippets
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