Regular Expression Help [2 lines]

[DylanButler]

Hi folks,

Plese see the regex below and let me know where I'm going wrong! I have been banging my head on this for a few hours already and I am just stumped.

$subcategories = '<li><a href="test">Test - Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="test">Something - Fashion</a></li>
<li><a href="test">Random - Technology</a></li>';
$subcategories = preg_replace('/<a (.*?)/>(.*?)/<\/a/>','<a '.$1.'>'.(isset(explode(' - ', $2)[1])) ? explode(' - ', $2)[1]:$2.'</a>', $subcategories);

I want it to become:

<li><a href="test">Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="test">Fashion</a></li>
<li><a href="test">Technology</a></li>

Any help would be appreciated and repped, thanks!

 

[Kate]

You could parse the whole string into an array with the split function, using the linebreak as a delimiter.

<?php
$subcategories = '<li><a href="test">Test - Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="test">Test - Fashion</a></li>
<li><a href="test">Test - Technology</a></li>';
//$subcategories = preg_replace('/<a (.*?)/>(.*?)/<\/a/>','<a '.$1.'>'.(isset(explode(' - ', $2)[1])) ? explode(' - ', $2)[1]:$2.'</a>', $subcategories); 
list($text) = split("[\n\r]+", $subcategories,null);

print_r($text);
?>

 

[DylanButler]

Thanks sdsinc, I will give this a shot. I am not sure this will solve the whole problem. I still need to match on the hyphen (-) and remove the first word from before it. That's the part I'm having the most trouble with.

 

[Kate]

Like this I capture everything but the first word after the anchor (assuming the href target is always "test")

<?php
$subcategories = '<li><a href="test">Test - Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="test">Something - Fashion</a></li>
<li><a href="test">Random - Technology</a></li>';

$pattern = '/(<li><a href="test">)\w+ - (.*)(<\/a><\/li>)/i';

$replacement = '$1$2$3';
echo preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $subcategories);
?>

 

[DylanButler]

Like this I capture everything but the first word after the anchor (assuming the href target is always "test")

<?php
$subcategories = '<li><a href="test">Test - Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="test">Something - Fashion</a></li>
<li><a href="test">Random - Technology</a></li>';

$pattern = '/(<li><a href="test">)\w+ - (.*)(<\/a><\/li>)/i';

$replacement = '$1$2$3';
echo preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $subcategories);
?>

Close, but my example wasn't loose enough. The list items and anchor tags actually have title attributes and differing href values, so it would be something more like this:

$subcategories = '<li><a href="sports.htm" title="Sports keywords">Test - Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="fashion.php" title="Fashion Stuff">Something - Fashion</a></li>
<li><a href="test">Random - Technology</a></li>';

Rep given, I appreicate you looking at this for me.

 

[Kate]

OK let's spice up things lol. What about this:

<?php
$subcategories = '<li><a href="sports.htm" title="Sports keywords">Test - Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="fashion.php" title="Fashion Stuff">Something - Fashion</a></li>
<li><a href="test">Random - Technology</a></li>'; 

$pattern = '/<li><a href="([^"]+)"(?: title="[^"]+")?>\w+ - (.*)<\/a><\/li>/im';

$replacement = '<li><a href="$1">$2</a></li>';
echo preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $subcategories); 
?>

Result:

<li><a href="sports.htm">Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="fashion.php">Fashion</a></li>
<li><a href="test">Technology</a></li>

First of all, note that we are just capturing the 2 fields that you need: anchor value and the text within.
Basically, it says:

• capture the value within <a href=""> (anything but the double quote ")
• allow for an optional tag title, located one space after the href
• Note the ?: at the beginning of the title pattern, this is to match the expression between parentheses but not capture it, I assume you don't need it.
• for the title tag, same simplistic expression, everything else than double quote "

Note the /im modifier at the end of the pattern, i means case-insensitive, m stands for multiline. There are other modifiers like u (Unicode) etc.

 

[DylanButler]

That will work perfectly for what I need, thank you! By the way I like you too much to give more rep to you, apparently. :/