Foreword: Humans are lazy by nature; we hold this truth to be self-evident. Any function in PHP that is going to save us a bit of time down the road is well worth the time invested in as a result.
Ever since the release of PHP 4, we’ve had the ability to utilize a function that automatically converts a string to uppercase characters. This function, UCWords, has many uses that aren’t so obvious at first glance.
The UCWords function automatically capitalizes every word within a given string. The function is especially easy to use since it only accepts a single argument: the string you want to be forced into uppercase stance. We can see an example of the usage of ucwords below, in our news headline demonstration.
PHP UCWords Example Of Basic Title Casing
<?PHP $newsHeadline = "breaking: man finds way to capitalize news headings automatically"; echo ucwords($newsHeadline); //Returns: Breaking: Man Finds Way To Capitalize News Headings Automatically ?>
So far things look fairly simple. But what exactly constitutes a new word for the UCWords function? Technically defined, a new word is going to be a string of characters following a whitespace, so long as the string doesn’t begin with a number. What do you think would happen if we were to start a string with an integer? Would the next letter be capitalized? In the below example, we take the real-life Internet company 43Things.com into consideration.
PHP UCWords Example Of Strings Starting With An Integer
<?PHP $webpageTitle = "43things.com"; echo ucwords($webpageTitle); //Returns 43things.com ?>
Note that in this example, the T will not be forced into capitalization because the string begins with a number. If we were to separate the number and the letter with a space, carriage return, newline, tab, or form-feed, then the letter would indeed be capitalized.
If the UCWords function encounters a string that is already capitalized, the function will not act on the string in question. If, however, the user were to convert the entire string to lower case letters and then pass the result to the UCWords function, we get a result as seen in the below example.
PHP UCWords Example Of Basic Rules Of Operation
<?PHP $screamingText = "THIS IS VERY LOUD TEXT" echo ucwords($screamingText); //Returns: THIS IS VERY LOUD TEXT echo ucwords(strtolower($screamingText)); //Returns: This Is Very Loud Text ?>
If we were concerned with only capitalizing a certain part of a string, we could write up a quick function to ensure that words that are commonly not capitalized are ignored. In many headings you may notice prepositions such as “at” or “to” aren’t capitalized. The following function solves the problem by accepting only a single argument.
PHP UCWords Function For Returning Partially Capitalized String
<?PHP function smartcase($str) { return preg_replace( "/(?<=(?<!:|'s)\W)(A|An|And|At|For|In|Of|On|Or|The|To|With)(?=\W)/e", 'strtolower("$1")', $str); } echo smartcase(ucwords("the prepositions in a title can be excluded with this function!")); //Output: The Prepositions in a Title Can Be Excluded with This Function! ?>
We could add other words to the ignore feature simply by editing the following line:
(A|An|And|At|For|In|Of|On|Or|The|To|With)
One of the more practical uses for UCWords is to sanitize input when putting information into a database. You may have noticed that some forum systems such as vBulletin will automatically change your thread title into title case if it is in all-caps. (After all, who really likes to read a screaming title?) An example of how this is done can be seen below, by implementing another function.
PHP UCWords Example Of Sanitizing Input
<?PHP function titleCase($string) { return ucwords(strtolower($string)); } $threadName = "CHECK OUT THIS NEW PHP FUNCTION GUYS!"; echo titleCase($threadName); //Returns: Check Out This New PHP Function Guys! ?>
UCWords has quite a bit of use to the PHP development community. Other functions that are worthy of noting would be: StrToUpper() , StrToLower() , UCFirst() , and MB_Convert_Case(). Each of these functions are necessary as the Internet shifts to a more and more dynamic environment.
Bottom line: We can all thank technology for allowing us to reduce the wear and tear on our Shift keys.
ucword() should turn “CHECK OUT THIS NEW PHP FUNCTION GUYS!” into “Check Out This New Php Function Guys!”
@jest – That’s incorrect, actually. You need to make use of the strtolower() function first, and then apply the ucwords() function. Take a look at the PHP.net manual for confirmation.
good job
How do you do that with a wordpress function like this
i tried is <?php echo ucwords ();?>
but it did not work. How should i do this
ucwords(); is good function in php, i like this website because i got newthing from here
What I think jesh meant to say is the last example, as written, would actually return “PHP” as “Php”.
Is there any way to get around the 43things example? We are trying to use this function to scrub addresses that start like 123A TEST ST. Is there a way to change it to the 123A Test St?
OBX – It works like a charm…consider your address variable was $title like below.
$title = “123A TEST ST”; $title = strtolower($title); function smartcase($strtitle) { return preg_replace( “/(?<=(?<!:|'s)\W)(A|An|And|At|For|In|Is|Of|On|Or|The|To|With)(?=\W)/e",'strtolower("$1")',$strtitle); } $title = @smartcase(ucwords($title)); echo "$title“;
Subodh
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