PHP replace characters except the HTML tags

Question

I need to replace the characters 0,1,2,...,9 with \xD9\xA0,\xD9\xA1,\xD9\xA2,...,\xD9\xA9 in a string. This string comes from the CKEditor so it may contains html tags. Using the following code

$body = str_replace("1", "\xD9\xA1", $body);

it replaces every 1 with \xD9\xA1 so it effects the tag <h1> and also <table border="1"> while I only need to replace the numbers in the body not the tags.

The tags that contain numbers are <h0><h1><h2><h3><h4><h5><h6> and cellspacing and cellpadding and border of table tag.

How do I can replace the numbers with the above symbols while it won't effect the <h0><h1><h2><h3><h4><h5><h6>and cellspacing and cellpadding and border ?

Never use regex on html. You need to use a parser stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/1916721 — carloabelli
– carloabelli, Commented Apr 30, 2015 at 16:43
You need to parse the HTML and perform the replacement only on textnodes. — Halcyon
– Halcyon, Commented Apr 30, 2015 at 16:43
I've never used any parser, I would be appreciated if you give me more details — M a m a D
– M a m a D, Commented Apr 30, 2015 at 16:45
Look at htmlparsing.com for starters, or this question stackoverflow.com/questions/3577641/… — Andy Lester
– Andy Lester, Commented Apr 30, 2015 at 16:52

Federico Piazza · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-30 17:16:29Z

7

You shouldn't use regex to process html, however if you still want to use a regex you could use the discard pattern with a regex like this:

<.*?>(*SKIP)(*FAIL)|1

Working demo

The idea behind this regex is to skip whatever it is within <...> but match the rest. So, it will only match the number 1 that are not within html tags. Once again, I'd use a html parser instead.

Php code

$re = "/<.*?>(*SKIP)(*FAIL)|1/"; 
$str = "<h0><h1><h2><h3>\n<table border=\"1\">\n1\n"; 
$subst = "\xD9\xA1"; 

$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);

answered Apr 30, 2015 at 17:16

Federico Piazza

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1 Comment

M a m a D Over a year ago

Thanks alot your code works. My website is based on Drupal, So if I want to use a parser I need to install its module on Drupal, it needs a few libraries so I guess using a simple code like yours is much more effective. thanks again

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