Literal < > characters in a PHP regex

Question

I'm trying to search through database content, using PHP, to find everything including and between specific HTML comments. Here's an example of the content I'm searching for:

<!-- wp:stmu/program-locations -->
<div class="programDetails" class="wp-block-stmu-program-locations">
<h2>Location</h2><ul><li>On Campus</li></ul>
</div>
<!-- /wp:stmu/program-locations -->

It's always structured the same way, with a comment, div, h2, ul, (variable number of lis), and closing comment. I want the regex to find these outer comments as well as the inner content, so the whole chunk can be replaced.

I've tried

<?php
$matched = preg_match(
    "/<!-- wp:stmu\/program-locations -->.*?<!-- \/wp:stmu\/program-locations -->/sg",
    $record->post_content,
    $matches
);
?>

which matches the desired content on regex.com, but on my server it does not return any matches. If I simplify to

<?php
$matched = preg_match(
    "<!-- wp:stmu\/program-locations -->",
    $record->post_content,
    $matches
);
?>

then I get matches, but it only matches !-- wp:stmu/program-locations -- - the actual < and > characters that wrap the comment are missing from the match. My PHP version is 7.3.13.

You used them as regex delimiters. Use the first regex but remove `g` flag and use `preg_match_all` — Wiktor Stribiżew, Jan 22 '20 at 16:20
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33701279/how-can-i-get-file-content-between-two-html-comments-and-replace-it-with-content may be a useful reference. — Nigel Ren, Jan 22 '20 at 16:24
Thank you so much, Wiktor - that did exactly what I needed! :) — WebElaine, Jan 22 '20 at 16:34

Literal < > characters in a PHP regex

0 Answers0