Long lists of items - Turned into Search strings - Is this possible?

[Pokerman]

Hi Guys,

I am trying to turn text into "auto links"!

I am adding lists of artists to my site. I want to add the list of Artists, and turn them into links so when the user clicks them, they are taken to a search on Amazon for the artists name.

I don't want to Manually code every link. Is there a script that will take each item from the list, and automatically turn them into search string links to an external site?

Is this possible with PHP, or would I also need to setup a MySQL database? Is this even possible at all? Or do I need to manually type all the anchor tags?

I appreciate any help in advance, and I will be amazed if anyone can answer this question. I've spent hours looking for answers on Google!

Many thanks,
P-Man

[Swiss]

This is very possible with PHP, you can dump the contents of a text file into a variable with the function file_get_contents(). I can't remember exactly how the function works, it might build an array with a key for each new line, or it might just treat it as a whole string, which you could then convert into an array with explode() using the newline character as the seperator, then loop through the array with a foreach loop to create your list of links.

Oh, if your new to PHP, you might want to read through a few pages of the manual to pick up the general syntax and theories, as well as looking up the functions for more info and examples on how they can be used. php.net

[Pokerman]

Kris,

Thanks for the info. I will look through the manual now and check it out.

Thanks again,

P-Man

[Pokerman]

Found this info also:

If the link is amazingly simple, like googles google.com/q=name, then you could perhaps do it another way, with some kind of unique marker like #Beatles, then use preg_replace to rewrite that to <a href=........ etc>Beatles</a>

I am not familiar with the preg_replace function. Can anyone explain how I could use this to automate the link creation from a list of names?

Thanks,
P-Man

[Swiss]

preg_replace() needs to be fed with a regular expression, I know of people that have been programming for years and they still can't get their head fully around them - If your new to programming as a whole, I would stay away from that, if you feel like you want to give it a try, regular-expressions.info is quite informative.

I get the feeling you're looking for something you can just copy and paste into your HTML to get this working - To save you the time and bother, you will most likely not find anything. It will be a case of learning the basics of PHP and coding it yourself. If you get into any problems try out the forums at phpfreaks.com or post back here as there are a few PHP people on here too.