new line to <p> in php

Question

I currently have a lot of jokes in a database that are formated with nl2br() which produces...

This is just dummy text. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
<br /><br />
Vestibulum gravida justo in arcu mattis lacinia. Mauris aliquet mi quis diam euismod blandit ultricies ac lacus.
<br /><br />
Aliquam erat volutpat. Donec sed nisi ac velit viverra hendrerit.
<br />
Praesent molestie augue ligula, quis accumsan libero.

I need a php function that rather convert <br /><br /> into a <p></p> and if there is only 1 <br /> then leave it alone. Also trim any whitespace

So the end result would be...

<p>This is just dummy text. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.</p>
<p>Vestibulum gravida justo in arcu mattis lacinia. Mauris aliquet mi quis diam euismod blandit ultricies ac lacus. </p>
Aliquam erat volutpat. Donec sed nisi ac velit viverra hendrerit.<br />
Praesent molestie augue ligula, quis accumsan libero.

can someone point me in the right direction or give me an simple function that does this? thanks

Answer 1

Use PHP's string replace function to replace all <br /><br /> with </p><p>. http://php.net/manual/en/function.str-replace.php

Sample Code:

$stringWithBRs = nl2br($originalString)
$stringWithPs = str_replace("<br /><br />", "</p>\n<p>", $stringWithBRs);
$stringWithPs = "<p>" . $stringWithPs . "</p>";

Or, you can use the following code without even calling the nl2br() function.

$stringWithPs = str_replace("\n\n", "</p>\n<p>", $originalString);
$stringWithPs = "<p>" . $stringWithPs . "</p>";