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Overview

All interaction with PHP Structured Text occurs through the class PhpStructuredText. Each time you need to convert some structured text to (X)HTML, create a new instance of PhpStructuredText, optionally set some properties, then call render or renderAsDom.

Example code

Simple use of the PhpStructuredText class would look something like:

$structuredText = new PhpStructuredText($content);
echo $structuredText->render();

A slightly more complicated use, that sets some properties, then renders to an XML DOM instance for further processing and final conversion to an XML fragment, might look like:

$structuredText = new PhpStructuredText($content);
$structuredText->setInitialHeadingLevel(3);
$structuredText->setExternalVariable("summary", true);
$dom = $structuredText->renderAsDom();

// ...
// ... some DOM manipulations ...
// ...

$xmlFragment = $structuredText->textFromDom($dom);

Methods

• PhpStructuredText($text) — constructor

  Creates an instance of PhpStructuredText, initialized with the contents of the $text parameter. $text should contain valid structured text markup.

• setExternalVariable($variable, $value)

  Sets a variable which can be tested using the :if:variable, :else, :endif construct within structured text.

  For example, the following structured text would render two different versions of a document, based on the value of the variable called summary:

  :if:summary
    Summary text would go here...
  :else
    The full text would go here...
  :endif
  

• setInitialHeadingLevel($level)

  By default, headings are rendered, starting at <h1>. To render text that needs an initial heading level greater than one, call this method.

• setLinkTarget($target)

  Sets the target attribute of <a> elements, for opening all links in other windows or frames.

• getTitle()

  Returns the document title that has been set by the :title:title text construct within structured text.

• render()

  Returns an (X)HTML fragment that is a rendering of the structured text that was passed to the constructor.

• renderAsDom()

  Returns an XML DOM representation of the structured text that was passed to the constructor. The root element of the DOM is <root>, and its children are the top-level elements from the structured text.

• textFromDom($dom)

  Given a DOM instance that was returned from an earlier call to renderAsDom(), this method will strip away the root element, and return an XML-fragment that represents the original structured text.

  Typically, an application would call renderAsDom(), do some DOM manipulation, then get a text representation of the modified DOM, by calling textFromDom($dom).