My guestbook's word filter doesn't work. I don't get any error messages, but the words aren't displayed as asterisks.

<?
$badwords = "word1,word2";
$filename = "data.html";
$message = stripslashes("$stuff");
$content = "Name: $name<BR>Email: <a href=\"\mailto:$mail\"\>$mail</a><BR>
Subject: $subject<BR>Message: $message<BR><BR>";
$filter = explode(",", $badwords);
foreach ($filter as $word) {
$message = str_replace("$word","****", $content);
}
if (is_writable($filename)) {
if (!$handle = fopen($filename, 'a')) {
print "Error!";
exit;
}
if (!fwrite($handle, $content)) {
print "Error!";
exit;
}
print "Success! Click <a href=\"view.php\">here</a> to go back. (You might need to refresh to see your post.)";
fclose($handle);
} else {
print "Error!";
}
?>

Thanks in advance!

Okay...I think I figured out where your problem is...

Your word replacer takes all the bad words in the variable $content and replaces them with stars, in the $message variable. Then, you ouput the unchanged $content variable to your file.

There are two ways to fix this:

1. Change $message = str_replace("$word","****", $content); to $content = str_replace("$word","****", $content);

OR

2. Change if (!fwrite($handle, $content)) { to if (!fwrite($handle, $message)) {

Hope this helps...

Thanks but that didn't work either. I'm trying a different tactic -- which doesn't work yet -- but I would be grateful if you would take a look at my new code. Thanks!

<?
$message = stripslashes("$stuff");
str_replace("word1", "****", $message);
str_replace("word2", "****", $message);
$content = "Name: $name<BR>Email: <a href=\"\mailto:$mail\"\>$mail</a><BR>
Subject: $subject<BR>Message: $message<BR><BR>";

$filename = "data.html";
if (is_writable($filename)) {
if (!$handle = fopen($filename, 'a')) {
print "Error!";
exit;
}
if (!fwrite($handle, $content)) {
print "Error!";
exit;
}
print "Success! Click <a href=\"guestbook.php\">here</a> to go back. (You might need to refresh to see your post.)";
fclose($handle);
} else {
print "Error!";
}
?>

Again, I don't get any parse errors or anything like that, but the words don't show up as asterisks.

I think your problem there is that when you do the str_replace, $message isn't modified. you would have to reassign the result of the str_replace to $message for it to be affected. what you have now is basically saying "create a new string with the asterisks instead of the word, but then throw it away"

this should be better:
$message = str_replace("word1","****",$message);

Thanks! That worked. Is there any way to make the words I want filtered lowercase, but not the entire message without writing str_replace() with different capitals over and over? (So that wOrD1, Word1, word1, etc. would all be replaced with ****, but the rest of the message would stay the same.) Thanks again.

I just found this in the php.net documentation:

instead of using str_replace(), use str_ireplace()

it is the case insensitive version of str_replace()

Thanks for the help, but my host is running PHP version 4.3.2, and php.net says that str_ireplace() requires PHP 5 CVS only. :( That would have been perfect, though. Do you know of any other way?

oops, didn't even notice that.

if you look at the user comments on that page though, someone posted an alternative function that you could try instead.

Thanks a bunch! I'm using one of the commentor's functions which works on PHP 3 and 4. Everything works now!

Shouldn't you be able to use

eregi_replace ??

just use the function built for making words or strings lowercase:

strtolower();

:)

James.

Shouldn't you be able to use eregi_replace ??
Thanks, but since it works now I'm just keeping what I've got.
just use the function built for making words or strings lowercase:

strtolower();

I thought about using that function, but I was afraid it would make the entire message lowercase and I didn't want that. I thought it would just be simpler to use the other function.

Thanks anyway, though!

Here's a function I wrote:

<?php
function filter_words($content) {
$badwords = @file('badwords.txt');
foreach ($badwords as $word) {
$word = substr(trim(strtolower($word)), 1);
$newword = str_repeat('*', strlen($word));
$content = preg_replace("/[^a-z]$word[^a-z]/i", $newword, $content);
}
return $content;
}
?>

Create a text file and put the banned words in there. (One per line.) Name it "badwords.txt"

badword
anotherbadword
someotherbadword