[SOLVED] Find and replace within a string maintaining beginning/end of said string

[benmartin]

I do not like to resort to asking questions in a forum like this, but I am exhausted in trying to find how to do this on my own.

 

I have zero familiarity with RegEx, but it seems that I need it to find a solution. I've never needed it until now.

 

Basic overview:

  we have started using Adobe InDesign and have a number of publications that need to be migrated to the web. The XML (more specifically - xml cross-media) output is full of worthless tags / stylesheet information / classes for every tag, that vary widely depending on the styles used by production for the print product.

 

 

Example:

  These are four different styles for different stories' headlines (the number denotes the font size):

p.head-styles-head-24 {}

p.head-styles-head-26 {}

p.head-styles-head-28 {}

p.head-styles-head-32 {}

 

    here are the headlines, along with the paragraph + class tags (not in the same order, but just to get an idea):

<p class="head-styles-head-32">Pending sdssdasdfas Legislation</p>

<p class="head-styles-head-32">SourcesasfasfsaasPackage</p>

<p class="head-styles-head-24">Firm Blood asdasdasCompetition</p>

                  etc.

 

    What I would like to do is strip everything after class="head-styles  from the < p > tag and add my own identifier (for further parsing)

 

    essentially replacing <p class="head-styles*****All other characters before the quote****"> to something like <p %%%headline%%%>

 

 

    it would be the equivalent of saying (where wild = %)    :

      find the string :      <p class="head-styles%">

      replace that with:    <p **whatever I specify**>  (I would believe that I'd be able to tell how to change what I want in there for other classes that exist, I just need a template).

 

it must be able to check against the "head-styles" because there are other tags like "body-styles".

 

Any help is MUCH appreciated. I've been working with this for days and have made zero progress.

 

 

I really hope this makes sense.

 

 

Thanks.

 

-Ben

[effigy]

Something like this?

 

<pre>
<?php
$data = <<<DATA
	<p class="head-styles-head-32">Pending sdssdasdfas Legislation</p>
	<p class="head-styles-head-32">SourcesasfasfsaasPackage</p>
	<p class="head-styles-head-24">Firm Blood asdasdasCompetition</p>
DATA;
$data = preg_replace('/(<p[^>]+class="head-styles)[^"]+/', '$1-new_style', $data);
echo htmlspecialchars($data);
?>
</pre>

[benmartin]

Effigy,

 

Thanks for the quick response.

 

Almost but not quite.

 

 

I've modified the code a little bit and I've added the output here as well.

 

----- code now (basically just changed the replace value) ---

 

<pre>

<?php

$data = <<<DATA

<p class="head-styles-head-32">Pending sdssdasdfas Legislation</p>

<p class="head-styles-head-32">SourcesasfasfsaasPackage</p>

<p class="head-styles-head-24">Firm Blood asdasdasCompetition</p>

DATA;

$data = preg_replace('/(<p[^>]+class="head-styles)[^"]+/', '<p myvalue>', $data);

echo htmlspecialchars($data);

?>

</pre>

 

 

 

--------- output

 

EDIT::::

 

Sorry, that is supposed to be :

 

 

<p myvalue>">Pending sdssdasdfas Legislation</p>

 

Not

             <p myvalue>">Pending sdssdasdfas Legislation</p>

<p myvalue>">SourcesasfasfsaasPackage</p>

<p myvalue>">Firm Blood asdasdasCompetition</p>

 

Notice the (edit) "> in green. I would like to have those removed. It is removed from the front however.

 

Aside from that, it's perfect.

 

I appreciate your help very much.

 

-Ben

 

 

 

[effigy]

Are there no other attributes you need to retain?

 

<pre>
<?php
$data = <<<DATA
	<p class="head-styles-head-32">Pending sdssdasdfas Legislation</p>
	<p class="head-styles-head-32">SourcesasfasfsaasPackage</p>
	<p class="head-styles-head-24">Firm Blood asdasdasCompetition</p>
DATA;
$data = preg_replace('/<p[^>]+class="head-styles[^>]+>/', '<p myvalue>', $data);
echo htmlspecialchars($data);
?>
</pre>

[benmartin]

No, that's all I was looking for.

 

What I will be looking for now is a good tutorial on this for the future. It seems like it can be pretty powerful.

 

 

Effigy, thanks so much for this. I am very grateful that you could help me.

 

 

Take care,

-Ben

[effigy]

Sure thing. See the Resources post. Personally, I fancy http://www.regular-expressions.info.