Regex help replacing text in multiple lines of text file

[John_A]

I have a file in the same location as my PHP file, say test.txt, and in multiple locations it has content like: -

href="http://www.domain.com/entry.php/256/1/this-is-the-title"

or

href="http://www.domain.com/entry.php/123/2/another-title"

 

which I need replaced within the file to: -

href="{EntryNumber=256.link}"

and

href="{EntryNumber=123.link}"

Only the first number is needed for the replacement, it will be between 1 and 999. Everything between the 5th / and the 2nd " can be safely ignored and removed. This is not the only content in the line, and sometimes there may be more than one occurrence per line.

 

I've got this so far: -

$buffer = "";
$fp = file($file);
foreach($fp as $line){
   $buffer .= preg_replace(***struggling with this bit***);
}
fclose($fp);
echo $buffer;
file_put_contents($file, $buffer);

Am I along the right lines generally? And I have no idea what the preg_replace should be as my regex is a bit trial and error, more error in this case...

 

As always, any help greatly appreciated!

 

EDIT: If it matters, the largest file I need to edit is 39Kb, and includes 175 occurrences of the replacements.

Edited March 30, 2017 by John_A

[requinix]

There's no need for file() - take the whole file into a string, run one regex to replace all instances, then send it back to the file.

 

The regex you're looking for could be like

#"http://www.domain.com/entry.php/(\d+)/[^"]+"#

Replace that with

"{EntryNumber=\1.link}"

Use single-quoted strings for those so PHP itself doesn't try to interpret what's in them.

[darklexus2k9]

i think what you want todo is really easy and can be done with one simple line of regex

 

preg_replace("/href=\"http:\/\/www.domain.com\/entry.php\/(.*?)\/(.*?)\"/", "href="{EntryNumber=$01.link}"", $input_data);

you can see this working at the following link : http://www.phpliveregex.com/p/jGr

Edited April 6, 2017 by darklexus2k9

[John_A]

Thank-you both!

 

I went with option #2, as it seemed the most straightforward. Worked perfectly

[darklexus2k9]

glad it helped if you need any more help feel free to send me a direct message