Censorship Function

[ibeblunt]

I wrote a censorship function for my site but I want to make it work better. Currently work but it will censor out the wrong things sometimes.

The way it works it replaces the letters with a symbol. I used "-".

For example let's say I want to censor out the word "cat", the function will censor any occurance of the word cat showing the user "---".

The way I call the function is as follows:

$text = censor_text($text);

However if the word is catalog. It will spit out "---alog".

So I want to fine tune it down to only censor the EXACT word. Any other additions you can come up with would be great.

----------------------------

function censor_text($text) {

$censor_list = "cat|dog|bird";

$censor_array = explode("|",$censor_list);

$number_of_words = count($censor_array);

for ($counter = 0; $counter < $number_of_words; $counter++) {

$censor_word = $censor_array[$counter];

$censor_letter_count = strlen($censor_word);

for ($letter_count = 0; $letter_count < $censor_letter_count; $letter_count++) {

$replace_string .= "-";

}

$text = eregi_replace($censor_word,$replace_string,$text);

$replace_string = "";

}

return $text;

}

[freddydoesphp]

Okay I took a slightly different approach:

<?
function censor_text($text) { 
	$data = explode(" ", $text);
	$censor_array = array("cat","dog","bird"); 
	for($i=0;$i<count($data);$i++) {
		if (in_array(strtolower($data[$i]), $censor_array)) {
			for($j=0;$j<strlen($data[$i]);$j++) {
				$tmp .= "-";
				}
			$data[$i] = $tmp;
			unset($tmp);
			}
		}	
	return implode(" ", $data); 
	}

print censor_text("This Cat lives in a catalog with his pal the Dog");
	
	
?>

[ibeblunt]

Lemme ask you this, if you wanted to pass a list of words to the array how would you do it? For example:

$censorwords = "cat,dog,bird";

Just a question...

[freddydoesphp]

I would actually pass the array to the function like this:

function censor_text($text, $censor_array) { 
	$data = explode(" ", $text);
	for($i=0;$i<count($data);$i++) {
		if (in_array(strtolower($data[$i]), $censor_array)) {
			for($j=0;$j<strlen($data[$i]);$j++) {
				$tmp .= "-";
				}
			$data[$i] = $tmp;
			unset($tmp);
			}
		}	
	return implode(" ", $data); 
	}

print censor_text("This Cat lives in a catalog with his pal the Dog", array("cat","dog","bird"));
	
	
?>

[ibeblunt]

I'm trying to put it in an application where the person would be able to change the censorship words. Like in the config file, they could set the censorwords_variable.

I actually want you to check out the app I wrote. It's my second PHP app and I really respect the quality of advice I've seen you post on this site. I'll send you the links via PM.

[freddydoesphp]

Then the easiest way to do that would be to create the array in the config file and simply globalize it inside the function like so.
===configfile=======
$censor_array = array("cat","dog","bird");






====Script file======
include("configfile");

function censor_text($text) {
global $censor_array;
$data = explode(" ", $text);
for($i=0;$i<count($data);$i++) {
if (in_array(strtolower($data[$i]), $censor_array)) {
for($j=0;$j<strlen($data[$i]);$j++) {
$tmp .= "-";
}
$data[$i] = $tmp;
unset($tmp);
}
}
return implode(" ", $data);
}

print censor_text("This Cat lives in a catalog with his pal the Dog");

[ibeblunt]

Once again FDP does his thing. Works rather well.

http://www.sohh.com/search/template.php?categoryID=1

If you look at the description for Hieroglyphics.com, you'll see it censors a word out. One drawback is that it won't catch words that have a symbol attached. Like 'cat.' will get through while 'cat' will get censored.

Oh well...no biggie.

[freddydoesphp]

This ought to ssolve that problem, just add to the $punc_array to add more puncuation you want left out.

<?
$censor_array = array("cat", "dog", "bee");
$punc_array = array(".", ",", "?");
function censor_text($text) { 
	global $censor_array, $punc_array;
	
	$data = explode(" ", $text);
	for($i=0;$i<count($data);$i++) {
		if (in_array(strtolower(ereg_replace("[\.,\?]", "", $data[$i])), $censor_array)) {

			for($j=0;$j<strlen($data[$i]);$j++) {
				if(in_array(substr($data[$i],$j,1), $punc_array)) {
					$tmp .= substr($data[$i],$j,1);
					}
				else {
					$tmp .= "-";
					}
				}
			$data[$i] = $tmp;
			unset($tmp);
			}
		}	
	return implode(" ", $data); 
	}

print censor_text("This Cat lives in a catalog with his pal the Dog.");
	
	
?>

[ibeblunt]

nope...

http://www.sohh.com/search/template.php?categoryID=1

[freddydoesphp]

Uh.. Where is the error? Also did you add that punctuation mark to the $punc_array array?

[ibeblunt]

I have this:

$punc_array = array(".", ",", "?", "!");

Check out the description of Hieroglyphics.com (first link under the links section.)

[freddydoesphp]

Oh yeah sorry since I didn't automate the regex you need to add the same punctuation to this line like I did here

if (in_array(strtolower(ereg_replace("[\.,\?\!]", "", $data[$i])), $censor_array)) {

[ibeblunt]

yup, yup

ereg_replace("[\.,\?\!]"

I need to read up on this function. I get it but I don't.

Thanks!

[freddydoesphp]

Well what it means is if the current word in the string converted to lowercase(strtolower() function) minus and puncutation(the ereg() function) is in the array $punc_array then skip that character in the string and replace everything else with a "-". Hope that clears it a up a bit.