Replace Multiple Words In A String In PHP

In this article, we will demonstrate how to replace multiple words in a string using PHP. This is a vital operation when manipulating text in PHP, where a word needs to get replaced with another for various reasons such as data cleaning or standardization.

Code snippet for String Replacement in PHP

Below is a simple piece of code that allows you to replace multiple words in a string.

<?php 

function replace_multiple_words($find, $replace, $string){
    return str_replace($find, $replace, $string);
}

$find=array('apple','orange','banana');
$replace=array('fruit1','fruit2','fruit3');
$string="apple is my first favorite fruit, orange is my second and banana is my third.";

echo replace_multiple_words($find, $replace, $string);

?>

Code Explanation for String Replacement in PHP

Let’s break the code down step by step.

In the PHP code snippet above, we first define a function called replace_multiple_words taking three parameters: $find, $replace, and $string.

This function uses the PHP function str_replace that takes the same three parameters: $find, $replace, and $string. The str_replace function in PHP replaces some characters with some other characters in a string.

We then define three arrays:

• $find: contains the word(s) we want to replace in a string. For this example, it’s ‘apple’, ‘orange’, and ‘banana’.
• $replace: contains the word(s) we want to replace the word(s) in the find array with. It’s ‘fruit1’, ‘fruit2’, and ‘fruit3’ in this example.
• $string: is the text we want to execute the replace operation on.

Finally, the echo statement calls our function replace_multiple_words().

When this script is executed, each word from the $find array found in the $string will be replaced by the corresponding word in the $replace array. The output will be:

‘fruit1 is my first favorite fruit, fruit2 is my second and fruit3 is my third.’

This way we can replace multiple words from a string in PHP. The simplicity and flexibility of replace operations in PHP make it a useful tool in any developer’s toolkit.