PHP RegEx extension - How to strip only url=*?

Question

I've written a regular expression to strip out BBCode tags - it just strips the allowed tags out (for later counting the string length without the tags).

I'm not an expert when it comes to regular expressions - so after an hour I found this pretty much working:

$pattern = "/\[\/?(i|b|u|url(.*?)|list|li)[\]\[]*\]/i";
$stripped = preg_replace($pattern, '', $text);

It only strips the allowed six tags (and no more - which it is supposed to) and the special tag 'url' which can be extended like 'url=http://someurl'.

I.e.

in:  [url=someurl]Lorem[/url] ipsum [test]dolor[/test] sit [b]amet[/b].
out: Lorem ipsum [test]dolor[/test] sit amet.

But the problem is, that it doesn't just strip out 'url=[sometext]' but also 'urlipsum'. I tried to add an '=' for parsing but couldn't get to the point.

Does anyone has a hint for me how to only strip out url when it comes with the =?

BBCode is a language which is too complex to be parsabale by regex. Have you tried a BBCode parser? — Mark Byers
– Mark Byers, Commented Jan 10, 2010 at 12:07
I have a component for the output but none that just strips all tags. I just use it for counting the length - because the bbcode tags don't count as used characters when inserting tags. The Pear class I found for BBcode couldn't live up to my expectations and did more than I wanted. — lorem monkey
– lorem monkey, Commented Jan 10, 2010 at 12:13

cletus · Accepted Answer · 2010-01-10 11:53:29Z

1

Try:

$pattern = '/\[\/?(i|b|u|url(=[^\]]+)?|list|li)[\]\[]*\]/i';

answered Jan 10, 2010 at 11:53

cletus

627k169 gold badges922 silver badges945 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

lorem monkey Over a year ago

This is great! Thank you very much! I added protocols for extra tests - since I don't want other than http(s), ftp and mailto: "/[\/?(i|b|u|url(=(http|https|ftp|mailto)[^]]+)?|list|li)[][]*]/i"

hobodave · Accepted Answer · 2010-01-10 12:02:57Z

0

  $pattern = "/\[\/?(i|b|u|url=(.*?)|url(?=\])|list|li)[\]\[]*\]/i";

answered Jan 10, 2010 at 12:02

hobodave

29.4k4 gold badges74 silver badges77 bronze badges

1 Comment

lorem monkey Over a year ago

This also strips the url-tag when written without an equal sign - I'll keep it in mind.

gb. · Accepted Answer · 2010-01-10 12:05:18Z

0

You may want to change the "greediness" of the quantifiers, try adding "U" pattern modifier or remove the question mark in ".*?", see PHP doc.

answered Jan 10, 2010 at 12:05

gb.

6565 silver badges12 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

PHP RegEx extension - How to strip only url=*?

3 Answers 3

1 Comment

1 Comment

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

3 Answers 3

1 Comment

1 Comment

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related