Question

I am trying to get all images path from a simple HTML code using preg_match function but I did not get it right. here is my code:

$meta='<img src=\"imgdir/4fd60181316c0cb257628528adb1c342.gif\"><br><img src=\"imgdir/e2326f439cc5f8c201b411bd66eaf9a0.gif\"><br>';
$pattern = "/^imgdir\/[a-zA-Z0-9].*(png|jpg|gif)/i";
preg_match($pattern, $meta, $result);

print_r($result);

please help me to get all images path. example: imgdir/4fd60181316c0cb257628528adb1c342.gif

Answer 1

The regex has a few issues:

1. You should not anchor at the beginning of the string (remove the ^)
2. The * quantifier should be put after the group []
3. The . should be properly escaped so that it matches a literal period
4. This last one is not an error, but since you are using the case-insensitive modifier /i there’s no need to specify both a-z and A-Z

The correct is:

$meta='<img src=\"imgdir/4fd60181316c0cb257628528adb1c342.gif\"><br><img src=\"imgdir/e2326f439cc5f8c201b411bd66eaf9a0.gif\"><br>';
$pattern = "/imgdir\\/[a-z0-9]*\\.(png|jpg|gif)/i";
preg_match($pattern, $meta, $result);

print_r($result);

See it in action.