Php Smartypants Laravel Package

Getting Started

1. Install: Require via Composer: composer require michelf/php-smartypants.
2. First use: Instantiate the parser and process Markdown or plain text—e.g., echo \Michelf\SmartyPants::defaultTransform('He said -- "Hello world."'); → outputs proper en-dash and curly quotes.
3. Key entry point: \Michelf\SmartyPants class; default static method defaultTransform() covers most common typographic conversions (quotes, dashes, ellipses).
4. Check docs: While minimal, the repo README outlines syntax variations and options.

Implementation Patterns

• Post-processing Markdown: Use in your pipeline after Markdown parsing (e.g., with league/commonmark), as SmartyPants enhances rendered HTML—not raw Markdown.
• Blade integration: Create a custom Blade directive:

  Blade::directive('typo', fn ($expression) => "<?php echo \\Michelf\\SmartyPants::defaultTransform({$expression}); ?>");
  

  Usage: @typo('She said -- "Let\'s go!"').
• Middleware approach: Wrap response content with SmartyPants::defaultTransform() in a global response middleware for site-wide typographic polish.
• Configurable variants: Use SmartyPants::process($text, $attr) to enable options like 2 (smart quotes only), 3 (no quotes), or custom settings like ['smart_quotes' => false].
• Inline for CMS: In admin edit views, preview rendered output via this package to avoid "ugly" punctuation during content editing.

Gotchas and Tips

• HTML safety: The class does not parse HTML—it assumes input is plain text or pre-sanitized. Passing raw HTML can corrupt tags (e.g., <a href="x">--y</a> → <a href="x">—y</a>), so strip tags first if needed: SmartyPants::defaultTransform(strip_tags($text)).
• No Markdown support: It’s not a Markdown parser—only processes text/sanitized HTML. Do not apply to raw Markdown source (e.g., # Title -- My Note will mangle -- inside headings).
• Encoding matters: Ensure input is UTF-8; non-ASCII dash/quote chars may not convert as expected if encoding is mismatched.
• Performance: Light, but avoid calling on large documents repeatedly—cache final output or use middleware-level caching.
• Extensibility: Though not PSR-12–clean, subclass \Michelf\SmartyPants to override applyRules() for custom rules (e.g., adding Spanish guillemets).
• No auto-detection: Dashes like -- become en-dashes always, --- em-dashes—no context-awareness. For technical docs, disable dashes via options if fidelity to code snippets is needed.