Trouble with PHP preg_replace()

Question

I feel like an amateur for asking this, but I've been struggling at this for a long time and can't solve the problem.

I'm making a forum with embedded YouTube videos and a rich text editor. I need a function to convert the HTML tag to BBCode, another to convert the BBCode back to HTML.

BBCode to HTML

$message = (get message from database);
$A = '/\[youtube](.*?)\[\/youtube\]/is';
$B = '<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/$1" width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/$1"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></object>';
preg_replace($A, $B, $message);

I need a script that reverses this process, turning the HTML into BBCode. If someone could help me out I would be extremely grateful, or maybe suggest a easier method if one exists, or even a link that could provide some insight into the issue.

Thank you.

Don't use regular expressions to parse HTML. You cannot reliably parse HTML with regular expressions. As soon as the HTML changes from your expectations, your code will be broken. See htmlparsing.com/php.html for examples of how to properly parse HTML with PHP modules. — Andy Lester
– Andy Lester, Commented Mar 14, 2013 at 3:23

Popnoodles · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-14 00:47:26Z

1

Try this

$message = 'Some text
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/abcdefgh" width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/abcdefgh"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></object>
More text
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/abcdefgh" width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/abcdefgh"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></object>
Even more text';

echo preg_replace("/\<object.*?youtube\.com\/v\/(.*?)\".*?object\>/ims", "[youtube]$1[/youtube]", $message);

edited Mar 14, 2013 at 0:47

answered Mar 14, 2013 at 0:16

Popnoodles

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4 Comments

Tom Over a year ago

Oh cool, it works. But may I ask how it works? The object tag will be among the user's message. Could it interfere with any of their other content or does it only apply to the object tags in their message?

Popnoodles Over a year ago

Yes it will remove other content. If that code is part of a bigger text string it needs tweaking.

Tom Over a year ago

That's fine! I can tweak around with it. Thanks a lot for that! :)

Popnoodles Over a year ago

Oh you asked how it works. Parenthesis collects the value. I've told the pattern to select everything from <object to /object> but, by identifying the characters before and after the youtube id, only collect the youtube id then replace that selection with just that collected string, and your [youtube] wrapper.

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