PHP Regex to match a specific css class name + :before pseudo

Question

Been more than 6 hours trying to find best PHP regex to match a specific class name + :before pseudo. For example I have css code like this

h1 {
  font-size: 3em;
  line-height: 1.65em;
}

p{line-height: 1.5em; margin: 10px 0;}

.action-admin:before{
   content: "";
   display: block;
   width: 50px;
   height: 50px;
}

.action-user:before{
   content: "";
   display: block;
   width: 20px;
   height: 20px;
}

footer{
   clear: both;
}

so, I want to search all css code that have class name match with '.action-{anyotherwords}:before' and listed them in a php variable (will process this to next action)

so, in simple words - I only want to get these code below from my css above

.action-admin:before{
   content: "";
   display: block;
   width: 50px;
   height: 50px;
}

.action-user:before{
   content: "";
   display: block;
   width: 20px;
   height: 20px;
}

Rakesh KR · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-09 18:04:47Z

1

You can use this regex to find all these blocks:

\.action-[\w-]+:before\s*?\{[^}]+\}

enter image description here

Example:

preg_match_all("/\.action-[\w-]+:before\s*?\{[^}]+\}/", $css, $matches);
$actionCSS = implode("\n\n", $matches[0]);

The CSS code with only the action blocks will then be in $actionCSS.

edited Jan 9, 2014 at 18:04

Rakesh KR

6,5475 gold badges45 silver badges58 bronze badges

answered Jan 9, 2014 at 17:45

Overv

8,5393 gold badges44 silver badges72 bronze badges

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

6 Comments

tenub Over a year ago

RegEx should be \.action-[a-z]+:before\s*\{[^}]+\}. Keep in mind this only allows for lowercase letters after ".action".

Overv Over a year ago

@tenub True, I limited myself to the bare minimum for his example code, but yours is better for generic CSS.

Omar Over a year ago

Thanks. Could you show me how to allow uppercase, number and another "-" too after ".action-" , I have some class with number, Uppercase and double "-", e.g. "action-super-admin{" , "action-Model-Cat1{" - Many thanks! :)

Overv Over a year ago

@Omar I've updated the regex to match everything after action, including dashes and uppercase characters (this will also match invalid CSS).

tenub Over a year ago

I would only allow numbers, uppercase characters, underscores, and hyphens (which are the only valid css characters that might appear here). Just change [a-z] to [\w-]. [^:] means anything other than a ":" which could include things like "–" or "÷".

|

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

PHP Regex to match a specific css class name + :before pseudo

1 Answer 1

6 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

6 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related