How to remove all characters exept numbers from a string using PHP

This is really easy, we will make use of the preg_replace PHP Function which is 100% compatible with PHP 5.3

Example: 

$string = 'This is my phone number: +28 (0)212 1234!!! '
 
$numberString = preg_replace('[\D]', '', $string);
 
echo $numberString; //Will output 2802121234

This is a good way to format phone numbers etc.

The regular expression character \D means to match a character that’s not a digit

How to remove all white spaces within a string using PHP

There are two functions that could be used namely str_replace and  preg_replace.

First, we’ll give an example using str_replace. str_replace is the preferred method since it’s faster and easier to use than preg_replace which relies on regular expressions.

str_replace (PHP 4, PHP 5) – http://de.php.net/manual/en/function.str-replace.php

$string =  "This is a test string";
$new_string = str_replace(' ','',$string);
echo $new_string; //This will output Thisisateststring

preg_replace (PHP 4, PHP 5) – http://php.net/manual/en/function.preg-replace.php

$string =  "This is a test string";
$new_string = preg_replace('/( *)/','',$string);
echo $new_string; //This will output Thisisateststring

or

 $string =  "This is a test string";
 $new_string = preg_replace('/\s/','',$string); // \s means strip all white spaces
 echo $new_string; //This will output Thisisateststring

PHP – parse text and convert urls into hyperlinks

The following function will parse a given text and convert all the urls into links. It does this using regular expressions. It converts email addresses to mailto links as well.

Code

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function parse_links($str) {     $str = str_replace('www.', 'http://www.', $str);     $str = preg_replace('|http://([a-zA-Z0-9-./]+)|', '<a href="http://$1">$1</a>', $str);     $str = preg_replace('/(([a-z0-9+_-]+)(.[a-z0-9+_-]+)*@([a-z0-9-]+.)+[a-z]{2,6})/', '<a href="mailto:$1">$1</a>', $str);     return $str; }

PHP: Unzip a Zip File

 This code allows you to Unzip a ZIP file with PHP.

<?php   
function unzip($location,$new_location){
    if(exec("unzip $location",$arr)){
        mkdir($new_location);
        for($i = 1;$i< count($arr);$i++){
            $file = trim(preg_replace("~inflating: ~","",$arr[$i]));
                    copy($location."/".$file,$new_location."/".$file);
                    unlink($location."/".$file);
            }
        return true;
    }
    return false;      
}
 
// usage of this code
if(unzip('ziped_files/test.zip','unziped_files/newfile')){
    echo 'Successfully unzipped!';
}else{
    echo 'Error while processing your file!';
 
}
?>

SEO friendly links in PHP

This code removes all special characters from the given URL and make it SEO friendly.

   <?php        

    function makeMyUrlFriendly($url){
        $output = preg_replace("/\s+/" , "_" , trim($url));
        $output = preg_replace("/\W+/" , "" , $output);
        $output = preg_replace("/_/" , "-" , $output);
        return strtolower($output);
    }
    ?>

Highlight specific words in a phrase with PHP

You may use this code to highlight specific words in your displaying search results.

    <?php 
    function highlight($str, $words){
        if(!is_array($words) || empty($words) || !is_string($str)){
            return false;
        }
        $arr_words = implode('|', $words);
        return preg_replace(
            '@\b('.$arr_words.')\b@si',
            '<strong style="background-color:yellow">$1</strong>',
            $str
        );
    }
    ?>

PHP: Highlight specific words in a phrase

Sometimes, for example, when displaying search results, it is a great idea to highlight specific words. This is exactly what the following function can do:

<?php

function highlight($sString, $aWords) {

 if (!is_array ($aWords) || empty ($aWords) || !is_string ($sString)) {
  return false;
 }

 $sWords = implode ('|', $aWords);
  return preg_replace ('@\b('.$sWords.')\b@si', '<strong style="background-color:yellow">$1</strong>', $sString);
}
?>