i think it won't work with str_replace easily so i'm going to use preg_replace
$data = array('title'=>'some title', 'date'=>1350498600, 'story'=>'Some story');
$template = "#title#, <br>#date(d)#<br> #date(m)#<br>#date(Y)#<br> #story#";
$result = preg_replace_callback('/#(\w+)(?:\\((.*?)\\))?#/', function ($match) use($data) {
$value = isset($data[$match[1]]) ? $data[$match[1]] : null;
if (!$value) {
// undefined variable in template throw exception or something ...
}
if (! empty($match[2]) && $match[1] == "date") {
$value = date($match[2], $value);
}
return $value;
}, $template);
Instead of using date(m)
or date(Y)
you could also do things like
date(d-m-Y)
using this snippet
This has the disadvantage that you can format only the date
variable using this mechanism. But with a few tweaks you can extend this functionality.
Note: If you use a PHP version below 5.3 you can't use closures but you can do the following:
function replace_callback_variables($match) {
global $data; // this is ugly
// same code as above:
$value = isset($data[$match[1]]) ? $data[$match[1]] : null;
if (!$value) {
// undefined variable in template throw exception or something ...
}
if (! empty($match[2]) && $match[1] == "date") {
$value = date($match[2], $value);
}
return $value;
}
$data = array('title'=>'some title', 'date'=>1350498600, 'story'=>'Some story');
$template = "#title#, <br>#date(d)#<br> #date(m)#<br>#date(Y)#<br> #story#";
// pass the function name as string to preg_replace_callback
$result = preg_replace_callback('/#(\w+)(?:\\((.*?)\\))?#/', 'replace_callback_variables', $template);
You can find more information about callbacks in PHP here