Question

I use preg_replace function that has to clear all the rel and target attributes from the $body and to replace them with other values. Here it is:

    $patterns = array();
    $patterns[] = '/<a(.*) rel="([^"]*)"(.*)>/';
    $patterns[] = '/<a(.*) target="([^"]*)"(.*)>/';
    $patterns[] = '/<a(.*)>/';

    $replacements = array();
    $replacements[] = '<a$1$3>';
    $replacements[] = '<a$1$3>';
    $replacements[] = '<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank"$1>';

    $body = preg_replace($patterns,$replacements,$body);

The problem is that it does not match single and no-quotes.
Also if there is any better approach for clearing the rel and target attributes from the links and setting them with others, please advise.

Thanks

EDIT: $body:

    $body = '<a href="TEST">Link1</a>
      <a href="TEST" rel=\'lqlqlq\'>Link2</a>
      <a href="TEST" target="_blank" rel="lqlqlq">Link3</a>
              <a href="TEST" target=_blank rel=lqlqlq>Link4</a>';

And also every other option for working links due to the text is user defined and probably some users are going to cheat. My goal – all of the links in $body to be with defined rel and target attributes no matter what the user has entered.

Answer 1

If you don’t want to match anything else at the same time I suggest you don’t and preserve system resources.

$patterns[] = "/rel=[\"\']?([\w]+)[\"\']?/";
$patterns[] = "/target=[\"\']?([_a-zA-Z]+)[\"\']?/"

I’m not the best at REGEX but as far as I know this will save you some time.