How replace all spaces inside HTML elements with   using preg_replace?

Question

I need replace spaces with   inside HTML elements. Example:

<table atrr="zxzx"><tr>
<td>adfa a   adfadfaf></td><td><br /> dfa  dfa</td>
</tr></table>

should become

<table atrr="zxzx"><tr>
<td>adfa&nbsp;a&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;adfadfaf></td><td><br />&nbsp;dfa&nbsp;&nbsp;dfa</td>
</tr></table>

what is the server side language ? or do you mean javascript ? — krtek
– krtek, Commented Mar 6, 2011 at 11:52
@Krtek - searching for preg_replace finds PHP results, so one cane assume this is a PHP question. — Oded
– Oded, Commented Mar 6, 2011 at 11:56
possible duplicate of Can you provide some examples of why it is hard to parse XML and HTML with a regex? — Brad Mace
– Brad Mace, Commented Jul 9, 2011 at 20:57
possible duplicate of RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags — Paŭlo Ebermann
– Paŭlo Ebermann, Commented Sep 15, 2011 at 14:12

krtek · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-06 11:53:00Z

9

If you're working with php, you can do

$content = str_replace(' ', '&nbsp;', $content);

answered Mar 6, 2011 at 11:53

krtek

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1 Comment

mauris Over a year ago

all spaces within attributes of html tags will be replaced as well

RafaelQm · Accepted Answer · 2019-02-25 13:15:41Z

4

use regex to catch data between tags

(?:<\/?\w+)(?:\s+\w+(?:\s*=\s*(?:\".*?\"|'.*?'|[^'\">\s]+)?)+\s*|\s*)\/?>([^<]*)?

then replace ' ' with ' '

also to catch before and after html :

^([^<>]*)<?

>([^<>]*)$

Edit: here you go....

<?php
$data="dasdad asd a  <table atrr=\"zxzx\"><tr><td>adfa a   adfadfaf></td><td><br /> dfa  dfa</td></tr></table>  asdasd s ";
$exp="/((?:<\\/?\\w+)(?:\\s+\\w+(?:\\s*=\\s*(?:\\\".*?\\\"|'.*?'|[^'\\\">\\s]+)?)+\\s*|\\s*)\\/?>)([^<]*)?/";

$ex1="/^([^<>]*)(<?)/i";
$ex2="/(>)([^<>]*)$/i";

$data = preg_replace_callback($exp, function ($matches) {
    return $matches[1] . str_replace(" ", "&nbsp;", $matches[2]);
}, $data);
$data = preg_replace_callback($ex1, function ($matches) {
    return str_replace(" ", "&nbsp;", $matches[1]) . $matches[2];
}, $data);
$data = preg_replace_callback($ex2, function ($matches) {
    return $matches[1] . str_replace(" ", "&nbsp;", $matches[2]);
}, $data);

echo $data;
?>

it works... slightly modified but it would work without modifications (but i dont think youd understand the code ;) )

edited Feb 25, 2019 at 13:15

RafaelQm

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answered Mar 6, 2011 at 12:00

n00b

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12 Comments

n00b Over a year ago

how is it not working for you ? -.-'''' what function do you use ?

n00b Over a year ago

i provided working php code. tell me if you have further problems

Pro85 Over a year ago

n00b32 i run you code. Result - changed data outside html tags. Table til content spaces. I use php 5.3.5

n00b Over a year ago

if you remove the second and third line begginin with '$data =' the code does exactly what you posted in your question... i use php 5.2.6-1+lenny9 so i think its consistent with your version

Pro85 Over a year ago

It's very strange but $exp not working, $ex1 and $ex2 is ok. preg_match return 0.

|

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 11:50:39Z

3

Since tokenizing HTML with regular expressions can be quite complicated (especially when allowing SGML quirks), you should use an HTML DOM parser like the one of PHP’s DOM library. Then you can query the DOM, get all text nodes and apply your replacement function on it:

$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc->loadHTML($str);
$body = $doc->getElementsByTagName('body')->item(0);
mapOntoTextNodes($body, function(DOMText $node) { $node->nodeValue = str_replace(' ', '&nbsp;', $node->nodeValue); });

The mapOntoTextNodes function is a custom function I had defined in How to replace text URLs and exclude URLs in HTML tags?

edited May 23, 2017 at 11:50

CommunityBot

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answered Mar 6, 2011 at 12:05

Gumbo

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2 Comments

n00b Over a year ago

isint this a bit of an overkill ? and if we are to overkill it we need to detect style/script etc etc tags...

Pro85 Over a year ago

I don't need to parse all html file. I need parse some parts like i posted in question.

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