Regular expression - move content from tag A to tag B

Question

I need help writing a regular expression that moves content from the title tag into the content tag.

This:

<xml>
 <item>
  <title>Title 1</title>
  <content>Text 1</content>
 </item>
 <item>
  <title>Title 2</title>
  <content>Text 2</content>
 </item>
</xml>

To this:

<xml>
 <item>
  <title>Title 1</title>
  <content>Title 1 Text 1</content>
 </item>
 <item>
  <title>Title 2</title>
  <content>Title 2 Text 2</content>
 </item>
</xml>

Edit: I made a new topic with a better explaination of my question: Regular expression - moving content between XML tags

SORRY!

[Do not parse XML with regular expressions.](http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/695343) — Jens Erat, Dec 19 '14 at 10:28
Do not duplicate your own questions. Instead edit the original one. - I now closed the original question as I already closed the duplicate one. You should make more clear in your question what you tried already so it's more specific with which part you actually have the question. Showing your own code does help in making this more clear in your question. — hakre, Dec 19 '14 at 14:27

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 19 '14 at 10:18

0

(<title>((?:(?!<\/title>).)*)<\/title>\s*<content>)((?:(?!<\/content>).)*)

Try this.Replace by

$1$2 $3

See demo.

https://regex101.com/r/vN3sH3/22

$re = "/(<title>((?:(?!<\\/title>).)*)<\\/title>\\s*<content>)((?:(?!<\\/content>).)*)/";
$str = "<xml>\n <item>\n <title>Title 1</title>\n <content>Text 1</content>\n </item>\n <item>\n <title>Title 2</title>\n <content>Text 2</content>\n </item>\n</xml>";
$subst = "$1$2 $3";

$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);

answered Dec 19 '14 at 10:18

vks

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I don't know how to use your regex in preg_replace() can you help me with that? – Dylan Dec 19 '14 at 10:58
@Dylan i have given the full code – vks Dec 19 '14 at 11:04
Its not working for me. Here is the XML file: http://bit.ly/1C7NZNv – Dylan Dec 19 '14 at 11:49
@Dylan you will have to store your `xml` in a variable and then apply the code – vks Dec 19 '14 at 12:13
I've done that but its not working. – Dylan Dec 19 '14 at 12:18

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 19 '14 at 11:26

0

First of all, using regex for parsing domnodes is bad, there are dom-parsers that help better. Expressions for matching title tag content:

RegEx with minimal flag (non-greedy, non matching newline):

\<title\>(.*)\</title\>

RegEx otherwise:

\<title\>([^\</title\>]*)\</title\>

edited Dec 19 '14 at 11:26

kero

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answered Dec 19 '14 at 10:20

Sebastian Lange

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 19 '14 at 10:20

Use DOTALL modifier s to make dot in your regex to match newline characters also.

Regex:

~(<title>([^<>]*)<\/title>.*?<content>)~s

Replacement string:

\1\2

DEMO

$re = "/(<title>([^<>]*)<\\/title>.*?<content>)/s";
$str = "<xml>\n <item>\n <title>Title 1</title>\n <content>Text 1</content>\n </item>\n <item>\n <title>Title 2</title>\n <content>Text 2</content>\n </item>\n</xml>";
$subst = "\1\2 ";
$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);

Regular expression - move content from tag A to tag B

3 Answers3