[php] get everything between <tag> and </tag> with php

I'm trying to grab a string within a string using regex.

I've looked and looked but I can't seem to get any of the examples I have to work.

I need to grab the html tags <code> and </code> and everything in between them.

Then I need to pull the matched string from the parent string, do operations on both,

then put the matched string back into the parent string.

Here's my code:

$content = "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. <code>Donec sed erat vel diam ultricies commodo. Nunc venenatis tellus eu quam suscipit quis fermentum dolor vehicula.</code>"
$regex='';
$code = preg_match($regex, $text, $matches);

I've already tried these without success:

$regex = "/<code\s*(.*)\>(.*)<\/code>/";
$regex = "/<code>(.*)<\/code>/";

this function worked for me

<?php

function everything_in_tags($string, $tagname)
{
    $pattern = "#<\s*?$tagname\b[^>]*>(.*?)</$tagname\b[^>]*>#s";
    preg_match($pattern, $string, $matches);
    return $matches[1];
}

?>

$regex = '#<code>(.*?)</code>#';

Using # as the delimiter instead of / because then we don't need to escape the / in </code>

As Phoenix posted below, .*? is used to make the .* ("anything") match as few characters as possible before it comes across a </code> (known as a "non-greedy quantifier"). That way, if your string is

<code>hello</code> something <code>again</code>

you'll match hello and again instead of just matching hello</code> something <code>again.

function contentDisplay($text)
{
    //replace UTF-8
    $convertUT8 = array("\xe2\x80\x98", "\xe2\x80\x99", "\xe2\x80\x9c", "\xe2\x80\x9d", "\xe2\x80\x93", "\xe2\x80\x94", "\xe2\x80\xa6");
    $to = array("'", "'", '"', '"', '-', '--', '...');
    $text = str_replace($convertUT8,$to,$text);

    //replace Windows-1252
    $convertWin1252 = array(chr(145), chr(146), chr(147), chr(148), chr(150), chr(151), chr(133));
    $to = array("'", "'", '"', '"', '-', '--', '...');
    $text = str_replace($convertWin1252,$to,$text);

    //replace accents
    $convertAccents = array('À', 'Á', 'Â', 'Ã', 'Ä', 'Å', 'Æ', 'Ç', 'È', 'É', 'Ê', 'Ë', 'Ì', 'Í', 'Î', 'Ï', 'Ð', 'Ñ', 'Ò', 'Ó', 'Ô', 'Õ', 'Ö', 'Ø', 'Ù', 'Ú', 'Û', 'Ü', 'Ý', 'ß', 'à', 'á', 'â', 'ã', 'ä', 'å', 'æ', 'ç', 'è', 'é', 'ê', 'ë', 'ì', 'í', 'î', 'ï', 'ñ', 'ò', 'ó', 'ô', 'õ', 'ö', 'ø', 'ù', 'ú', 'û', 'ü', 'ý', 'ÿ', 'A', 'a', 'A', 'a', 'A', 'a', 'C', 'c', 'C', 'c', 'C', 'c', 'C', 'c', 'D', 'd', 'Ð', 'd', 'E', 'e', 'E', 'e', 'E', 'e', 'E', 'e', 'E', 'e', 'G', 'g', 'G', 'g', 'G', 'g', 'G', 'g', 'H', 'h', 'H', 'h', 'I', 'i', 'I', 'i', 'I', 'i', 'I', 'i', 'I', 'i', '?', '?', 'J', 'j', 'K', 'k', 'L', 'l', 'L', 'l', 'L', 'l', '?', '?', 'L', 'l', 'N', 'n', 'N', 'n', 'N', 'n', '?', 'O', 'o', 'O', 'o', 'O', 'o', 'Œ', 'œ', 'R', 'r', 'R', 'r', 'R', 'r', 'S', 's', 'S', 's', 'S', 's', 'Š', 'š', 'T', 't', 'T', 't', 'T', 't', 'U', 'u', 'U', 'u', 'U', 'u', 'U', 'u', 'U', 'u', 'U', 'u', 'W', 'w', 'Y', 'y', 'Ÿ', 'Z', 'z', 'Z', 'z', 'Ž', 'ž', '?', 'ƒ', 'O', 'o', 'U', 'u', 'A', 'a', 'I', 'i', 'O', 'o', 'U', 'u', 'U', 'u', 'U', 'u', 'U', 'u', 'U', 'u', '?', '?', '?', '?', '?', '?');
    $to = array('A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'AE', 'C', 'E', 'E', 'E', 'E', 'I', 'I', 'I', 'I', 'D', 'N', 'O', 'O', 'O', 'O', 'O', 'O', 'U', 'U', 'U', 'U', 'Y', 's', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'ae', 'c', 'e', 'e', 'e', 'e', 'i', 'i', 'i', 'i', 'n', 'o', 'o', 'o', 'o', 'o', 'o', 'u', 'u', 'u', 'u', 'y', 'y', 'A', 'a', 'A', 'a', 'A', 'a', 'C', 'c', 'C', 'c', 'C', 'c', 'C', 'c', 'D', 'd', 'D', 'd', 'E', 'e', 'E', 'e', 'E', 'e', 'E', 'e', 'E', 'e', 'G', 'g', 'G', 'g', 'G', 'g', 'G', 'g', 'H', 'h', 'H', 'h', 'I', 'i', 'I', 'i', 'I', 'i', 'I', 'i', 'I', 'i', 'IJ', 'ij', 'J', 'j', 'K', 'k', 'L', 'l', 'L', 'l', 'L', 'l', 'L', 'l', 'l', 'l', 'N', 'n', 'N', 'n', 'N', 'n', 'n', 'O', 'o', 'O', 'o', 'O', 'o', 'OE', 'oe', 'R', 'r', 'R', 'r', 'R', 'r', 'S', 's', 'S', 's', 'S', 's', 'S', 's', 'T', 't', 'T', 't', 'T', 't', 'U', 'u', 'U', 'u', 'U', 'u', 'U', 'u', 'U', 'u', 'U', 'u', 'W', 'w', 'Y', 'y', 'Y', 'Z', 'z', 'Z', 'z', 'Z', 'z', 's', 'f', 'O', 'o', 'U', 'u', 'A', 'a', 'I', 'i', 'O', 'o', 'U', 'u', 'U', 'u', 'U', 'u', 'U', 'u', 'U', 'u', 'A', 'a', 'AE', 'ae', 'O', 'o');
    $text = str_replace($convertAccents,$to,$text);

    //Encode the characters
    $text = htmlentities($text);

    //normalize the line breaks (here because it applies to all text)
    $text = str_replace("\r\n", "\n", $text);
    $text = str_replace("\r", "\n", $text);

    //decode the <code> tags
    $codeOpen = htmlentities('<').'code'.htmlentities('>');
    if (strpos($text, $codeOpen))
    {
        $text = str_replace($codeOpen, html_entity_decode(htmlentities('<')) . "code" . html_entity_decode(htmlentities('>')), $text);
    }
    $codeOpen = htmlentities('<').'/code'.htmlentities('>');
    if (strpos($text, $codeOpen))
    {
        $text = str_replace($codeOpen, html_entity_decode(htmlentities('<')) . "/code" . html_entity_decode(htmlentities('>')), $text);
    }

    //match everything between <code> and </code>, the msU is what makes this work here, ADD this to REGEX archive
    $regex = '/<code>(.*)<\/code>/msU';
    $code = preg_match($regex, $text, $matches);
    if ($code == 1)
    {
        if (is_array($matches) && count($matches) >= 2)
        {
            $newcode = $matches[1];

            $newcode = nl2br($newcode);
        }

    //remove <code>and this</code> from $text;
    $text = str_replace('<code>' . $matches[1] . '</code>', 'PLACEHOLDERCODE1', $text);

    //convert the line breaks to paragraphs
    $text = '<p>' . str_replace("\n\n", '</p><p>', $text) . '</p>';
    $text = str_replace("\n" , '<br />', $text);
    $text = str_replace('</p><p>', '</p>' . "\n\n" . '<p>', $text);

    $text = str_replace('PLACEHOLDERCODE1', '<code>'.$newcode.'</code>', $text);
    }
    else
    {
        $code = false;
    }

    if ($code == false)
    {
        //convert the line breaks to paragraphs
        $text = '<p>' . str_replace("\n\n", '</p><p>', $text) . '</p>';
        $text = str_replace("\n" , '<br />', $text);
        $text = str_replace('</p><p>', '</p>' . "\n\n" . '<p>', $text);
    }

    return $text;
}

You can also try:

function getTagValue($string, $tag)
{
    $pattern = "/<{$tag}>(.*?)<\/{$tag}>/s";
    preg_match($pattern, $string, $matches);
    return isset($matches[1]) ? $matches[1] : '';
}

It returns empty string in case of no match.

you can use /<code>([\s\S]*)<\/code>/msU this catch NEWLINES too!

To retrieve or delete the content of a script tag, even with special cases like <script async>.

$str = '
Some js embed
<script async>
  alert("js")
  let job, origin = new Date().getTime()
</script>
<span id="OUT"></span>
<button onclick="alert()">RESET</button>
timer experiment
';

$reg = '/<script([\s\S]*)<\/script>/';

preg_match($reg, $str, $matches);
$match = substr($matches[0], (strpos($matches[0], ">")+1));
$match = str_replace("</script>", "", $match);
echo $match;
/* OUTPUT
  alert("js")
  let job, origin = new Date().getTime()
*/
echo "\n---------------------\n";
echo preg_replace($reg, "DELETED", $str);
/* OUTPUT
  Some js embed
  DELETED
  <span id="OUT"></span>
  <button onclick="alert()">RESET</button>
  timer experiment
*/

You can use the following:

$regex = '#<\s*?code\b[^>]*>(.*?)</code\b[^>]*>#s';

• \b ensures that a typo (like <codeS>) is not captured.
• The first pattern [^>]* captures the content of a tag with attributes (eg a class).
• Finally, the flag s capture content with newlines.

See the result here : http://lumadis.be/regex/test_regex.php?id=1081