Badword filter in PHP?
- by morpheous
I am writing a badword filter in PHP.
I have a list of badwords in an array and the method cleanse_text() is written like this:
public static function cleanse_text($originalstring){
if (!self::$is_sorted) self::doSort();
return str_ireplace(self::$badwords, '****', $originalstring);
}
This works trivially, for exact matches, but I wanted to also censor words that have been disguised like 'ab*d' where 'abcd' is a bad word. This is proving to be a bit more difficult.
Here are my questions:
Is a badword filter worth bothering with (it is a site for professionals so a certain minimum decorum is required - I would have thought)
Is it worth the hustle of trying to capture obvious work arounds like 'f*ck' - or should I not attempt to filter those out.
Is there a better way of writing the cleanse_text() method above?
