Regular expression / php to change url format

Question

I have been given the task of updating a rather ugly, dated site, that has info on hundreds of cities, all of which sit on their own subdomain, for example:

london.sitedomain.com

The plan is to get rid of all these subdomains and set the site up properly as pages, in this format:

sitedomain.com/london

Unfortunately, there is a mass, hardcoded list making up a dropdown menu, looking something like this (but with hundreds):

<a href="http://sydney.sitedomain.com">Sydney</a>
<a href="http://auckland.sitedomain.com"> Auckland</a>
<a href="http://melbourne.sitedomain.com"> Melbourne</a>
<a href="http://perth.sitedomain.com"> Perth</a>
<a href="http://wellington.sitedomain.com"> Wellington</a>

If I set this huge list up as a php string, is there a decent way to change, in bulk, every subdomain substring into the correct format, as stated above? Or is there a better solution you can think of?

What is the problem ? Create the file, implement a 5 line algorithm in php exploding each file into its tokens and reassemble the tokens the way you like and write them into an output file line by line. You can try as often as you like until you have the result you want. What is the problem ? — arkascha
– arkascha, Commented Jul 28, 2012 at 13:54

joshhendo · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-28 13:59:12Z

2

I think you'd be better off using a search and replace in a program like Notepad++ or Sublime Text. Both can do a regular expression search and replace of a folder (and subfolders.) I don't think PHP would be the best solution to this for a bunch of hard coded links (it could be done, but is much easier and more reliable this way.)

Use the following regular expression:

search:  http://(.*?)\.sitedomain.com
replace: http://sitedomain.com/\1

You could potentially do that in PHP with those search and replace fields, but if you just need to change a bunch of HTML files then I think using a text editor is much better.

answered Jul 28, 2012 at 13:59

joshhendo

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1 Comment

Michael Watson Over a year ago

Thanks. How long have I lived on this earth & not realised I can do this in my text editor? Pah! You missed the $ sign before the 1, might want to add that. Thanks again

madfriend · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-28 13:59:10Z

1

If your links are dynamic (i.e. not hard-coded), change the way they are assigned to HTML template. The following should work:

$newurl = preg_replace("#(?:https?://)?(\w+)\.sitedomain\.com/(.*)#i", "sitedomain.com/$1/$2", $oldurl);

If your links are static, use any advanced text editor (Notepad++, Gedit, TextMate, etc.) and pick Search and Replace. First argument of preg_replace above is for Search field, second - for Replace.

answered Jul 28, 2012 at 13:59

madfriend

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amitchhajer · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-28 13:54:19Z

0

one thing you can do is, explode and get the first string and append it with the remaining including the /

answered Jul 28, 2012 at 13:54

amitchhajer

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pcarvalho · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-28 14:19:01Z

0

i suggest you go into a different route and automatize the process by using the reg exp in .htaccess. that way you don't need to even write that big list

something like this:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^((www\.)?[^.]+)\.sitedomain\.com.*$
RewriteRule (.*) http://sitedomain.com/%1 [L]

this will grab the www (if it has), then the subdomain and append the subdomain to the url

answered Jul 28, 2012 at 14:19

pcarvalho

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