Text transformation in PHP
In this tutorial we'll look at 5 functions which can be used to transform the capitalization of strings in PHP. This is good for preparing and formatting strings for output to the users.
Converting strings to upper and lower case
The functions strtolower and strtoupper convert strings to all lowercase and all uppercase respectively:
<?
$string = 'hEllO woRLD';
$lower = strtolower($string);
$upper = strtoupper($string);
echo $lower . '<br />';
echo $upper;
?>
This outputs:
hello world
HELLO WORLD
Note that the functions return the transformed string and do not output it on their own
Altering first letter of a string
The functions lcfirst and ucfirst convert the first letter of strings to lowercase and all uppercase respectively:
<?
$lower = lcfirst('Hello World');
$upper = ucfirst('hello world');
echo $lower . '<br />';
echo $upper;
?>
This outputs:
hello World
Hello world
NOTICE: lcfirst is only available in PHP 5.3.0 and above
Transforming words in a string
The function ucwords converts the first letter of every word in a string to uppercase:
<?
$upper = ucwords('hello world');
echo $upper;
?>
This will output:
Hello World
There isn't currently a lcwords function.