[Solved] Regular expression - parse string

PHP
1

Hi,

I’m trying to extract all content of below string starting from tag [caption] to tag [/caption] including the tags. Preg_match_all seems to me the most adequate function. Can you help with the pattern please?

$str = "Some text... [caption id=\"attachment_275305\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"640\"]<a href=\"http://www.site.com\"><img class=\"size-full\" src=\"http://www.site.com\" alt=\"pic\" width=\"640\" height=\"345\" /><\/a> Photo by[/caption] ...more text";

Many thanks.

2 
"~\[caption(.*?)\](.*?)\[/caption\]~i"

Note: Trim all subpatterns for extraneous spacing.
Edit: Probably also want the case insensitive flag.

3

It worked just like I wanted.

Is it also possible to remove the block [caption][/caption] and remain only with the text using regular expressions.

Thanks for your help.

4

stick that pattern into preg_replace, passing it “$2” as the replacement.

5

Just noticed it’s returning only a single block [caption][/caption]. It can happen that the string has 2 or more. Sorry, I should had mentioned this on my first post.

As to the preg_replace, unfortunately the link was kept.

echo preg_replace("~\[caption(.*?)\](.*?)\[/caption\]~i", "$2", $str);

Some text... <a href="http://www.site.com"><img class="size-full" src="http://www.site.com" alt="pic" width="640" height="345" /><\/a> Photo by ...more text

Thanks once again.

6

so use [FPHP]preg_match_all[/FPHP] instead of preg_match? :wink:

And if you want to remove HTML tags, [FPHP]strip_tags[/FPHP].

7

Sorry, a little confusion with local/production environment. I didn’t replace preg_match with preg_match_all.

All is working now. Thanks!

8

There is still an issue.

$str = "Some text... [caption id=\"attachment_275305\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"640\"]<a href=\"http://www.site.com\"><img class=\"size-full\" src=\"http://www.site.com\" alt=\"pic\" width=\"640\" height=\"345\" /><\/a> Photo by[/caption] ...more text";

echo strip_tags(preg_replace("~\[caption(.*?)\](.*?)\[/caption\]~i", "$2", $str));

The result is:
“Some text… Photo by …more text”

Instead of:
“Some text… …more text”

I wanted to remove all content within block [caption] [/caption]. Why is it that “Photo by” still appears?

9

Because you said you wanted to extract it. That’s what the regex is doing.

If you mean you want to replace it with an empty string, change the
"$2" to ""

10

Working now. Thanks.

11

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