regex to match a specific HTML string with any number of spaces inside it

Question

I have code with several lines like this

<p> &lt;inset&gt;</p>

Where there may be any number of spaces or tabs (or none) between the opening <p> tag and the rest if the string. I need to replace these, but I can't get it to work.

I thought this would do it, but it doesn't work:

<p>[ \t]+&lt;inset&gt;</p>

Every time you regex some html, Allan Turing stomps on a kitten. — Marc B
– Marc B, Commented Feb 23, 2012 at 18:30
@MarcB: Too funny. :-) There's nothing wrong with using regex on HTML when what you're wanting to do is very simple, though (like this). — FtDRbwLXw6
– FtDRbwLXw6, Commented Feb 23, 2012 at 18:35

hakre · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-23 18:46:19Z

5

Try this:

$html = preg_replace('#(<p>)\s+(&lt;inset&gt;</p>)#', '$1$2', $html);

edited Feb 23, 2012 at 18:46

hakre

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answered Feb 23, 2012 at 18:32

FtDRbwLXw6

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Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:03:33Z

If you want true text-trimming for HTML including everything you can encounter like those entitites, comments, child-elements and all that stuff, you can make use of a TextRangeTrimmer and TextRange:

$htmlFragment = '<p> &lt;inset&gt;</p>';

$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadHTML($htmlFragment);
$parent = $dom->getElementsByTagName('body')->item(0);
if (!$parent)
{
    throw new Exception('Parent element not found.');
}

$range = new TextRange($parent);
$trimmer = new TextRangeTrimmer($range);
$trimmer->ltrim();

// inner HTML (PHP >= 5.3.6)
foreach($parent->childNodes as $node)
{
    echo $dom->saveHTML($node);
}

Output:

<p>&lt;inset&gt;</p>

I've both classes in a gist: https://gist.github.com/1894360/ (codepad viper is down).

See as well the related questions / answers:

penartur · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-23 18:31:11Z

-2

Try to load your HTML string into a DOM tree instead, and then trim all the text values in the tree.

http://php.net/domdocument.loadhtml

http://php.net/trim

answered Feb 23, 2012 at 18:31

penartur

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2 Comments

hakre Over a year ago

That's more a comment than an answer.

penartur Over a year ago

OP said: "I need to replace these, but I can't get it to work", and my answer allows them to get rid of the extra whitespace characters as they want. As Marc B said, Every time you regex some html, Allan Turing stomps on a kitten.

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