Automatic formatting in Smarty

[gilgamesh]

For my own personal usage having to strip out special characters and new lines for BoxOver really made maintaining the boxover HTML insert code difficult. I have complicated popup boxes that often have forms and DIV tables inside them.

So I put together a simple Smarty plugin(for PHP developers using Smarty) that I use to allow for the plain HTML to be kept intact but stripped out and converted into a BoxOver friendly HTML format ready for the end user. The code isn't the prettiest, but it works.

USAGE:
(making sure there is no newline before or after the escapestrip tags within the SPAN/DIV)

<span class="popup" title="cssbody=[contextbox_body] cssheader=[contextbox_header] header=[Update Comments] body=[ {escapestrip}

		<form action='{#root_script#}' method=post>
			<textarea name='Comments' rows=4 cols=30>{$prospect->Comments}</textarea><br>
			<input type='hidden' name='ProspectId' value='{$prospect->ProspectId}'>
			<input type='hidden' name='action' value='prospect_updatecomments'>
			<input type='submit' value='Update'>
		</form>
		{/escapestrip}] singleclickstop=[on] fixedrelx=[0] fixedrely=[10]">

Stick this in a file called: block.escapestrip.php in smarty/plugins folder

PHP Code:

<?php
/**
 * Smarty plugin
 * @package Smarty
 * @subpackage plugins
 */

/**
 * Smarty {escapestrip}{/escapestrip} block plugin
 *
 * Type:     block function<br>
 * Name:     escapestrip<br>
 * Purpose:  strips the input of new lines and html-unfriendly code
 *           <br>
 * @param array
 * <pre>
 * Params:   none
 * </pre>
 * @author Greg Nelson <gregnelson at iypf dot org>
 * @param string contents of the block
 * @param Smarty clever simulation of a method
 * @return string string $content re-formatted
 */
function smarty_block_escapestrip($params, $content, &$smarty)
{
    if (is_null($content)) {
        return;
    }

    $assign= null;

    $pat[0] = "/^\s+/";
    $pat[1] = "/\s{2,}/";
    $pat[2] = "/\s+\$/";
    $rep[0] = "";
    $rep[1] = " ";
    $rep[2] = "";
    
    $_output = $content;

    $_output = preg_replace($pat,$rep,$_output);
    
    // protect '->'
    $_output = str_replace("->", '#--#', $_output);

    // remove bad characters
    $_output = str_replace("<", "<", $_output);
    $_output = str_replace(">", ">", $_output);    
    $_output = str_replace("\"", "'", $_output);
    $_output = str_replace("\\'", "'", $_output);
    
    $_output = trim($_output);
    
    // boxover issue - square brackets are reserved
    $_output = str_replace("[", "[[", $_output);
    $_output = str_replace("]", "]]", $_output);
        
    // return the ->'s
    $_output = str_replace("#--#", '->', $_output);


    return $assign ? $smarty->assign($assign, $_output) : $_output;
}

?>

Now, all I need to find is a way to template the HTML code used in BoxOver so that my pages aren't soo huge.