# Getting Started With Zend_Markup

This guide to get you started with Zend_Markup uses the BBCode parser and HTML renderer. The priciples discussed can be adapted to other parsers and renderers.

Basic Zend_Markup Usage

We will first instantiate a Zend_Markup_Renderer_Html object using the Zend_Markup::factory() method. This will also create a Zend_Markup_Parser_Bbcode object which will be added to the renderer object.

Afther that, we will use the render() method to convert a piece of BBCode to HTML.

    // Creates instance of Zend_Markup_Renderer_Html,
    // with Zend_Markup_Parser_BbCode as its parser
    $bbcode = Zend_Markup::factory('Bbcode');

    echo $bbcode->render('[b]bold text[/b] and [i]cursive text[/i]');
    // Outputs: '<strong>bold text</strong> and <em>cursive text</em>'

A more complicated example of Zend_Markup

This time, we will do exactly the same as above, but with more complicated BBCode markup.

    $bbcode = Zend_Markup::factory('Bbcode');

    $input = <<<EOT
    [list]
    [*]Zend Framework
    [*]Foobar
    [/list]
    EOT;

    echo $bbcode->render($input);
    /*
    Should output something like:
    <ul>
    <li>Zend Framework</li>
    <li>Foobar</li>
    </ul>
    */

Processing incorrect input

Besides simply parsing and rendering markup such as BBCode, Zend_Markup is also able to handle incorrect input. Most BBCode processors are not able to render all input to XHTML valid output. Zend_Markup corrects input that is nested incorrectly, and also closes tags that were not closed:

    $bbcode = Zend_Markup::factory('Bbcode');

    echo $bbcode->render('some [i]wrong [b]sample [/i] text');
    // Note that the '[b]' tag is never closed, and is also incorrectly
    // nested; regardless, Zend_Markup renders it correctly as:
    // some <em>wrong <strong>sample </strong></em><strong> text</strong>