vb.org Archive - Miscellaneous Hacks - Replace threadpost characters

Recently I was in search of a way to replace or restrict the use of non-alpha characters used in thread titles. This is useful when adding your thread titles to a welcome header or other area where these characters would look out of place (i.e. '!' or '?' placed mid sentence).

The following is a manual addition of code which will replace specified characters with whatever you want.

Start by finding /includes/class_dm_threadpost.php
You may want to make a backup copy of this file in case you blow things up :eek:

Open class_dm_threadpost.php in an editor and find the following code:

Code:

// replace html-encoded spaces with actual spaces

$title = preg_replace('/&#(0*32|x0*20);/', ' ', $title);

If you only want to replace the characters '?' and '!' with a space, then below the above code you would add:

Code:

$title = preg_replace('/[\?\!]/', ' ', $title);

NOTE: DO NOT delete or change the first piece of code. It is there to prevent html from being added to thread titles. Add all additional code under it.

Between the [brackets] only add the characters you wish to have replaced when a user types it into their thread title. Separate each character with a backslash.

I personally didn't want to see anything except alpha-numeric titles so I included just about every character. The first part replaces the specified character with a space. The next part I added replaces each specific character with a corresponding word (i.e. '&' is replaced by the word 'and').
Below:

Code:

// replace html-encoded spaces with actual spaces

$title = preg_replace('/&#(0*32|x0*20);/', ' ', $title);

I added:

Code:

// replace special characters with actual spaces

$title = preg_replace('/[\?\!\#\$\%\^\*\~\|\:\;\...]/', ' ', $title);

// replace special characters with...

$title = preg_replace('/[\@]/', ' at ', $title);

$title = preg_replace('/[\+]/', ' plus ', $title);

$title = preg_replace('/[\=]/', ' equals ', $title);

$title = preg_replace('/[\&]/', ' and ', $title);

Special thanks to Oleg for helping me locate where to find this file/code.

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Template Usage: (1)ad_footer_end (1)ad_footer_start (1)ad_header_end (1)ad_header_logo (1)ad_navbar_below (4)bbcode_code_printable (1)footer (1)gobutton (1)header (1)headinclude (6)option (1)post_thanks_navbar_search (1)printthread (4)printthreadbit (1)spacer_close (1)spacer_open Phrase Groups Available: global postbit showthread	Included Files: ./printthread.php ./global.php ./includes/init.php ./includes/class_core.php ./includes/config.php ./includes/functions.php ./includes/class_hook.php ./includes/modsystem_functions.php ./includes/class_bbcode_alt.php ./includes/class_bbcode.php ./includes/functions_bigthree.php Hooks Called: init_startup init_startup_session_setup_start init_startup_session_setup_complete cache_permissions fetch_threadinfo_query fetch_threadinfo fetch_foruminfo style_fetch cache_templates global_start parse_templates global_setup_complete printthread_start bbcode_fetch_tags bbcode_create bbcode_parse_start bbcode_parse_complete_precache bbcode_parse_complete printthread_post printthread_complete
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