From Text to Picture - Need help

[JRF2k]

Hello, here's what I am trying to accomplish and I have no idea how to do it or what I am doing. :-)

I have a 'blog about online poker. I am getting tired of always having to type out all these image tags to display pictures of the cards, so what I was wanting to do is use a PHP to replace text with the picture of the card.

Such as AhKdTc would display the image of the Ace of Hearts, King of Diamonds and Ten of Clubs. I know that I would need to put all 52 card images into an array, but after that I am flummoxed. I am not sure how to make the script parse through and say 'Ok, I've come to 2c4dAc. I need to display the images for Two of Clubs, Four of Diamons, and the Ace of Clubs.

Can anyone help me please? My fingers are getting tired typing in all those image tags.

Thanks a bunch!

JRF2k

[Gaheris]

Will those cards just be displayed after each other?
I'm not into Poker, can you explain the syntax of 2c4dAc a bit more detailed?

[Young Twig]

It's [number][suite], so:
Kh (King Hearts)
9d (9 Diamonds)
Ac (Ace Clubs)
etc...

[JRF2k]

Young Twig has the syntax down. 2c4dAc would be Two of Clubs, Four of Diamonds and Ace of Clubs.

Basically, it will look like this: CARD1CARD2CARD3 CARD4 CARD5. There's a space after the first three, and the fourth. I tried this with Javascript but it doesn't work very well with the blogger I am using.

JRF2k

[JRF2k]

Can no one help me with this?

[Chillijam]

I'd suggest that you slightly alter your syntax to ensure that the string won't appear anywwhere else in your text - eg. [card]4c[/card] rather than 4c,

$text = "I want to display the four of clubs using [card]4c[/card].  That should do it."; 

then a str_replace like

$text = str_replace("[card]","<img src=/path/to/imagedir/",$text);
$text = str_replace("[/card]",".jpg />",$text); 

to turn that into

"I want to display the four of clubs using <img src=/path/to/imagedir/4c.jpg />. That should do it.";

Make sense? I know there are probably better ways, but I am not too hot on regular expressions at the moment.....

[Gaheris]

Untested, hope it helps.

function handle_card_bbc ($string) {
    $cards = array_map(create_function('$s', 'return trim($s);'), explode('|', $string));
    $suits = array('s', 'h', 'c', 'd');
    $ranks = array('A', 'K', 'Q', 'J', '10', '9', '8', '7', '6', '5', '4', '3', '2');
    $return = '';
    foreach ($cards as $card) {
        switch(strlen($card)) {
            case 2:
                $rank = $card{0};
                $suit = $card{1};
                break;
            case 3:
                $rank = substr($card, 0, 2);
                $suit = $card{3};
                break;
            default:
                return '';
        }
        if (!in_array($rank, $ranks) || !in_array($suit, $suits)) {
            return '';
        }
        // filename: suit_rank.gif
        $filename = $suit . '_' . $rank . '.gif';
        $return .= '<img src="images/cards/' . $filename . '" class="card" />';
    }
    return $return;
}

$string = 'Check out these cards [cards]2c|4d|Ac[/cards] neat, eh?';
$string = preg_replace('~\[cards\](.+?)\[/cards\]~ei', "handle_card_bbc('\\1')", $string); 

[JRF2k]

Thanks guys I will try both methods and see how it goes.

[JRF2k]

Both scripts work great! Thanks again guys. My only question is how would I insert a space after the 3rd card and fourth card to produce something like:

AhAdKc 4d 5c

Would this be an easy thing to do?

Thanks again for the scripts they were exactly what I was looking for!

[JRF2k]

Any ideas? Everything I have tried has failed.

[Chillijam]

Any ideas? Everything I have tried has failed.

You could probably use a similar kind of idea to display a "spacer" image. A 1x1 transparent gif would be a good idea for the image src, an d then you could add an extra str_replace to search for you spacing terminator. eg

$spacertext = [card]10c[/card][card]jc[/card][card]qc[/card][card]spacer[/card][card]kc[/card][card]spacer[/card][card]1c[/card]
$spacertext = str_replace("[card]spacer[/card]","<img src=/path/to/imagedir/spacer.gif width=12>",$spacertext);