PHP - Need help extracting multiple strings with regex pattern

Question

I am having trouble extracting some patterns from a string using PHP. Here is the example string:

"New [[supplier]] price request for [[legal-entity]]"

What I need to do is extract all the "merge tags" (in brackets), from that string and output in an array. The array I need is:

array(
    0 => "[[supplier]]',
    1 => "[[legal-entity]]"
);

Have a look at preg_match_all(). Search SO for previous answers too - this is definitely a question that I've seen before — Darragh Enright
– Darragh Enright, Commented Aug 23, 2018 at 18:32
Possible duplicate of PHP: Best way to extract text within parenthesis? — Daniel Klischies
– Daniel Klischies, Commented Aug 23, 2018 at 19:32

Paolo · Accepted Answer · 2018-08-23 18:32:42Z

1

You can use the expression:

\[\[[^]]+\]\]

\[\[ Two [ brackets.
[^]]+ Negated character set, anything that is not a ].
\]\] Two ] brackets.

Regex demo here.

In PHP:

<?php

$input = 'New [[supplier]] price request for [[legal-entity]]';

$matches = array();
preg_match_all('/\[\[[^]]+\]\]/s', $input, $matches);
print_r($matches);

Prints:

[0] => Array
        (
            [0] => [[supplier]]
            [1] => [[legal-entity]]
        )

PHP demo here.

answered Aug 23, 2018 at 18:32

Paolo

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2 Comments

Darragh Enright Over a year ago

I like that character negation, nice one

Paolo Over a year ago

You are welcome. Cheers @DarraghEnright, yes the negated character set requires less steps than matching anything lazily, compare the two debuggers: negated character set vs anything lazily

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