PHP Strings
A PHP String is a sequence of letters and words like a sentence or name, numbers that are a String Type, special characters or combination of all these characters.
You can create a string by nesting it in between a matching pair of single quotes ” or double quotes “”. You can also store a String in a Variable and echo it out.
<?php
$stringexample = 'Hello World';
echo $stringexample . '<br>';
echo "Hello World Again";
?>
Working with PHP Strings
PHP has a lot of built in functions that help you work directly with Strings.
Return the Length of a String
You can use the PHP strlen()
function to return the length of a string.
<?php
$stringexample = 'Hello World';
echo strlen($stringexample) . '<br>';
echo strlen("Hello World Again");
?>
Uppercase the first letter of the first word
You could use ucfirst()
function to accomplish this goal as demonstrated below.
<?php
$firstname = 'joel is my first name.';
echo ucfirst($firstname);
?>
Upper Case the first letter of all Words in a String
For this, you would use the PHP function ucwords()
as demonstrated below.
<?php
$fullname = 'joel rivera';
echo ucwords($fullname);
?>
Lowercase all letters in a word
This is helpfull if a person fills out a form and accidently mixes up the case of various letters.
<?php
$makelower = 'hELlo wOrlD';
echo strtolower($makelower);
?>
You can combine PHP String Functions as well
This is where you can start taking full advantage of PHP. Below we have a variable called $fullname that has a name as a value that is mixed case. You can nest the strtolower()
inside the ucwords()
to fix the name and make it look right.
ucwords(strtolower($fullname))
<?php
$fullname = 'jOEl rIVerA';
echo ucwords(strtolower($fullname));
?>
Let’s break down what’s happening in the example above.
- The variable $fullname is first being proccessed by
strtolower($fullname)
which makes every letter lowercased. - Then you see that strtolower($fullname) is completely nested inside the
ucwords(strtolower($fullname))
which makes the first letter of each word uppercase. - Key thing to notice is the inner function is the first function to process the string and then the outer funciton is next.
Count the Words in a String
This is helpful if you want a word count.
<?php
$howManyWords = 'How many words are in this string.';
echo str_word_count($howManyWords);
?>
As you can see, PHP has numerous ways for you to work with Strings.