Some handy PHP String functions

Hey buddy, here are some handy-dandy PHP String functions for you.

heredoc is a way to declare strings using a special syntax, allowing multiline strings without needing to escape quotes.

echo <<<"FOOBAR"
Hello World!
FOOBAR;

nowdoc is kinda similar to heredoc but treats the enclosed string literally, ignoring variables and special characters.

echo <<<'EOD'
Example of string spanning multiple lines
using nowdoc syntax. Backslashes are always treated literally,
e.g. \\ and \'.
EOD;

Get the length of a string

echo strlen($str1);

Convert a string to lowercase

echo strtolower($str1);

Convert a string to uppercase

echo strtoupper($str1);

Uppercase the first character of a string

echo ucfirst($str1);

Uppercase the first character of each word in a string

echo ucwords($str1);

Get a substring from a string starting at index 6

echo substr($str1, 6);

Get a substring from a string starting at index 6 with a length of 4

echo substr($str1, 6, 4);

Find the position of a substring in a string (case-sensitive)

echo strpos($str1, "Hello");

Find the position of a substring in a string (case-insensitive)

echo stripos($str1, "hello");

Convert an array into a string using implode

$arr1 = [1, "two"];
print_r(implode($arr1));

Convert a string into an array using explode

print_r(explode("@foo", $str1));
$str2 = "lol#oof#sheez";
print_r(explode("#", $str2));

Replace a substring in a string

$str2 = "welcome back!"; 
echo str_replace("back", "home", $str2);

Remove HTML tags from a string

$html_text_content = "<p>lol</p>";
echo strip_tags($html_text_content);

Escape special characters in a string

$name = "tom's world";
echo addslashes($name);

Remove slashes from a string

$str_with_slashes = "\yes \sir";
echo stripslashes($str_with_slashes);

Trim white spaces from the beginning and end of a string

$str_with_spaces = "    no!   ";
echo trim($str_with_spaces);

Shuffle characters in a string

$shuffle_me = "hello there!";
echo str_shuffle($shuffle_me);

Generate and display a 6-character OTP

$otp = "1726341237472364782346253";
echo substr(str_shuffle($otp), 0, 6);

Use md5 to a string (not recommended for password hashing)

$pwd = "password123";
echo md5($pwd);
echo password_hash($pwd, PASSWORD_DEFAULT);

Verify a password hash

$hash = '$2y$10$.vGA1O9wmRjrwAVXD98HNOgsNpDczlqm3Jq7KnEd1rVAGv3Fykk1a';
if (password_verify('rasmuslerdorf', $hash)) {
    echo 'Password is valid!';
} else {
    echo 'Invalid password.';
}

Encode and decode strings to/from base64

$str3 = "test";
echo base64_encode($str3);
echo base64_decode("dGVzdA==j");

Do you have something more to add? Feel free to add them in the comment section to help other devs.

Comments

[CristinaSoy]

Thanks a lot Tommy! very useful info!