Having trouble with a PHP preg_replace

Question

Okay, lets say I have the following text...

<h2><a name="test1"></a>Test 1</h2>test 1 text
<h2><a name="test2"></a>Test 2</h2>
test 2 text
<h3><a name="test3"></a>Test 3</h3>
test
3
text
<h4><a name="test4"></a>Test 4</h4>
<h4><a name="test5"></a>Test 5</h4>test 5 text

I would like to use regular expressions to replace that text with the following:

<div class="toggle">
    <h2><a name="test1"></a>Test 1</h2>
    <div class="contents">test 1 text</div>
</div>
<div class="toggle">
    <h2><a name="test1"></a>Test 2</h2>
    <div class="contents">test 2 text</div>
</div>
<div class="toggle">
    <h3><a name="test1"></a>Test 3</h3>
    <div class="contents">test
3
text</div>
</div>
<div class="toggle">
    <h4><a name="test1"></a>Test 4</h4>
    <div class="contents"></div>
</div>
<div class="toggle">
    <h4><a name="test1"></a>Test 5</h4>
    <div class="contents">test 5 text</div>
</div>

I tried using:

$text = preg_replace('#<h(\d+)>(.*?)</h\1>(.*)#si', '<div class="ToggleContents"><h$1>$2</h$1><div class="contents">$3</div></div>', $text);

But the problem with this is that it's far too greedy and I haven't figured out how to make it ungreedy and work. Anyone have any ideas?

Why not use a [DOM parser](http://php.net/manual/en/book.dom.php) instead of a regex? — Jared Farrish, Aug 25 '11 at 01:38
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags/1732454#1732454 — Phil, Aug 25 '11 at 01:40
Can you modify the code to :
Test 1
test 1 text for example? — Book Of Zeus, Aug 25 '11 at 01:47

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 25 '11 at 01:58

3

$text = '<h2><a name="test1"></a>Test 1</h2> test 1 text
<h2><a name="test2"></a>Test 2</h2> test 2 text
<h3><a name="test3"></a>Test 3</h3> test 3 text
<h4><a name="test4"></a>Test 4</h4> test 4 text
<h4><a name="test5"></a>Test 5</h4> test 5 text';

$text = preg_replace('#<h([1|2|3|4|5|6])>(.*?)</h([1|2|3|4|5|6])>\ (.*?)(\n|$)#si', '
<div class="toggle">
  <h\\1>\\2</h\\1>
  <div class="contents">\\4</div>
</div>
', $text);

Or the <span> solution:

$text = '<h2><a name="test1"></a>Test 1</h2><span>test 1 text</span>
<h2><a name="test2"></a>Test 2</h2><span>test 2 text</span>
<h3><a name="test3"></a>Test 3</h3><span>test 3 text</span>
<h4><a name="test4"></a>Test 4</h4><span>test 4 text</span>
<h4><a name="test5"></a>Test 5</h4><span>test 5 text</span>';

$text = preg_replace('#<h([1|2|3|4|5|6])>(.*?)</h([1|2|3|4|5|6])><span>(.*?)</span>#si', '
<div class="toggle">
  <h\\1>\\2</h\\1>
  <div class="contents">\\4</div>
</div>
', $text);

answered Aug 25 '11 at 01:58

Book Of Zeus

49,509
18
174
171

thanks... almost works... I've updated my question with a different $text format. How would I get it working now? – Jason Axelrod Aug 25 '11 at 02:05
is that code provided be updated? or it needs to be parsed like that? – Book Of Zeus Aug 25 '11 at 02:06
the text is in all manner of different formats... sometimes without linebreaks, sometimes with. Updated again. Notice that text 4 doesn't have anything. Basically, you have the dot operator seeking till the next \n. I need the dot operator to seek till the next tag. – Jason Axelrod Aug 25 '11 at 02:08
The code has to be parsed as is. It has to seek till the next or $ – Jason Axelrod Aug 25 '11 at 02:24
does it needs to be a pref_replace? or a preg_match with replace can work? – Book Of Zeus Aug 25 '11 at 02:46
if you add these before the preg_replace, it works! $text = str_replace("\n", ' ', $text); $text = preg_replace("#\ #", "", $text); $text = preg_replace("##", "\n", $text); but it's not the most elegant solution. I think you should parse data before preg_replace (like adding ) – Book Of Zeus Aug 25 '11 at 02:56
That does work... but it gets rid of existing line breaks. If you look at my first post at "test 3" results, you can see that I need the line breaks to be maintained. Editing the source text is not possible; which is why I have to do it in regex. – Jason Axelrod Aug 26 '11 at 00:33

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 26 '11 at 01:14

I figured it out... I just appended ##### to all headers, and seeked to that.

$page['HTML'] = preg_replace('#(<h(\d+)>)#i', '#####$1', $page['HTML']);
$page['HTML'] = preg_replace(
        '#<h(\d+)>(.*?)</h\1>(.*?)(\#{5}|$)#si',
        '<div class="ToggleContents"><h$1>$2</h$1><div class="contents">$3</div></div>',
        $page['HTML']);
$page['HTML'] = preg_replace(
        '#<div class="ToggleContents"><h(\d+)>(.*?)</h\1><div class="contents">([<br\s/>]*?)</div></div>#i',
        '<h$1>$2</h$1>$3',
        $page['HTML']);
$page['HTML'] = str_ireplace('#####', '', $page['HTML']);

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 25 '11 at 02:00

1

Split it into three different search and replace operations?

answered Aug 25 '11 at 02:00

Jim

11
1

Having trouble with a PHP preg_replace

Test 1

3 Answers3