preg_match and intercepting a string before writing to DB

[Laibcoms]

Example - $post_tagging = '<!--tags tag1, tag2, tag3 -->';

then

 function addTags( & $content, $Tags, $Before, $After, $Link, $LinkAttributes )
 {
 $IsFirst = true;
 $ContentTags = '';
 foreach( $Tags as $Tag )
 {
 if( strlen( $Tag ) > 1 )
 {
 if( $IsFirst === true )
 $IsFirst = false;
 else
 $ContentTags .= ' • ';
 $TagToDisplay = str_replace( '+', ' ', $Tag );
 $ContentTags .= '<a '.$LinkAttributes.' href="'.$Link.$Tag.'">'.$TagToDisplay.'</a>';
 }
 }
 if( strlen( $ContentTags ) > 1 )
 {
 // Tags added
 $content .= $Before.$ContentTags.$After;
 return true;
 }
 else
 {
 // No tags added
 return false;
 }
 } // addTags
 function render( & $content, $format )
 {
 $AddedAtLeastOneTag = false;
 if( preg_match( '/<!--tags?[\s]+([^>]*)[\s]*--\>/si', $content, $Matches ) )
 {
 if( preg_match_all( '/([^\s]*)[\s]*/si', $Matches[ 1 ], $Matches ) )
 {
 // Sort using human-like alphabetic order
 natcasesort( $Matches[ 1 ] );
 // Add miscellaneous tagging systems
 $AddedAtLeastOneTag ¦= $this->addTags( $content, $Matches[ 1 ], '<div class="Tags"><strong>Technorati tags:</strong> ', '</div>', 'http://technorati.com/tag/', 'target="_blank" rel="tag"' );
 }
 }
 // No tags found?
 global $current_User, $preview;
 if( isset( $preview ) && $preview!= false && is_logged_in() &&!$AddedAtLeastOneTag )
 {
 // Display a warning message
 $content .= '<div style="margin:0;padding:16px;color:black;border:solid 4px red;"><p>Tags are missing. To insert a tag, write the following (X)HTML code in your post:</p><blockquote><p><code>&lt;!--tags keyword1 keyword2 keywords3+keywords4 keyword5--&gt;</code></p></blockquote></div>';
 }
 return true;
 }

then data is inserted in DB.

-----------
What we want to happen is to make the $post_tagging be parsed by the two functions addTags and render before it gets written in the DB.

Is it possible?

Thank you very much!

[coopster]

Sure, why not? You could either make the variable global [php.net] in the functions' namespace or you could return the updated variable instead of just TRUE.