PHP - preg_replace

Question

I have some HTML content and I would like to replace a tag:

<span class='c1'>MY TEXT</span>

And keep MY TEXT. I tried with:

$result = preg_replace('/(<span class=\'c1\'>)(.*)(<\/span>)/', '$2', $my_string);

But the closed tag still remains? Can you help me and EXPLAIN where is my mistake? I would like to improve myself! Thank you

It probably matches on the closing tag too with `(.*)`, as a test you could do something like `([^ — javex, Jul 23 '12 at 07:47
Your code works fine for me, I don't see what the problem is, but just as a note, some of the parentheses are not needed, e.g. you could use this: `preg_replace('/(.*)/', '$1', $my_string);` — uınbɐɥs, Jul 23 '12 at 07:49
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/11/parsing-html-the-cthulhu-way.html .... — KingCrunch, Jul 23 '12 at 07:55
Obligatory: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags — F.P, Jul 23 '12 at 07:56

Jon Newmuis · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-23T08:00:06.120

Try using a lazy match (.*?) instead of a greedy match (.*).

Greedy match means it will match as much as possible before finishing, so if you have another </span> somewhere, it will match that instead. For example:

Using a greedy match:

<span class='c1'>MY TEXT</span><span class='c1'>MY OTHER TEXT</span>
                 ^--greedy match will go from here to here--^

Using a lazy match:

<span class='c1'>MY TEXT</span><span class='c1'>MY OTHER TEXT</span>
                 ^-lazy^                        ^---lazy----^

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 23 '12 at 07:54

0

Try it

$result = preg_replace('/(\<span class=(\'|\")?c1(\'|\")?\>)(.*)(\<\/span\>)/i', '$4', $my_string);

answered Jul 23 '12 at 07:54

ke20

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 23 '12 at 07:54

0

Your match-all group probably consumes too much and you see another </span> from the trailing content. You should try

$result = preg_replace('/(<span class=\'c1\'>)(.*?)(<\/span>)/', '$2', $my_string);

which uses an ungreedy match-all (.*?).

answered Jul 23 '12 at 07:54

Dio F

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uınbɐɥs · Answer 4 · 2012-07-23T08:30:38.590

Use Simple HTML DOM, it's the best solution for manipulating HTML elements.

Example:

require_once('simple_html_dom.php');
$html = str_get_html('<span class="c1">MY TEXT</span>');
$text = $html->plaintext;

Or if you have an entire HTML document (rather than just a snippet of HTML):

require_once('simple_html_dom.php');
$html = str_get_html('html goes here');
$text = $html->find('span.c1', 0)->plaintext; // Find text from first <span> with the class 'c1'

It's as simple as that.

score 0 · Answer 5 · edited Jul 24 '12 at 08:06

0

This will give you perfect result:

preg_match_all('/<span(.*?)class=\'c1\'>(.*?)<\/span>/', '$2', $my_string, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);
for ($i = 0; $i < count($result[0]); $i++) {
   echo $result[0][$i];
}

edited Jul 24 '12 at 08:06

Druid

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answered Jul 23 '12 at 08:15

Indian

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Good One bro..got exactly what i wanted – Haresh Chaudhary Aug 06 '12 at 11:34

PHP - preg_replace

5 Answers5