Question

I’m trying to replace a href and I have the following code : <a href="http://www.mysite.com" target="_blank">My site</a>

with that :

$textarea_content = '<a href="http://www.mysite.com" target="_blank">My site</a>';
$patterns = array(
    "/<a href=/",
    "/target*\=*\'*\_blank*\'*\>/",
    "/<*\/a>/"
);
$replacements = array(
    "[url=",
    "]",
    "[/url]"
);
$textarea_content = preg_replace($patterns,$replacements, $textarea_content);

I need to convert the link tag to this structure :

[url='http://www.mysite.com']My site[/url]

The problem is that the output is something like : <a href="" http:="" www.mysite.com''="" target="_blank">My site</a>

What I’m doing wrong ? Thanks for help!

Answer 1

echo preg_replace('/(?:\<a\s+.*href=\"([^\"]*)"[^\>]*\>([^\<]*)\<\/a\>)/', '[url=\'\\1\']\\2[/url]', $text);

Assuming:

$text = 'Bla bla bla <a href="http://www.mysite.com" target="_blank">My site</a> bla bla bla';

Result:

Bla bla bla [url='http://www.mysite.com']My site[/url] bla bla bla

EDIT According to OP’s comment below:

If want to get back your HTML you just have to do this:

echo preg_replace('/(?:\[url=\'([^\']*)\'\]([^\[]*)\[\/url\])/', '<a href="\\1" target="_blank">\\2</a>', $parsed);

Assuming:

$parsed = 'Bla bla bla [url=\'http://www.mysite.com\']My site[/url] bla bla bla';

Result:

Bla bla bla <a href="http://www.mysite.com" target="_blank">My site</a> bla bla bla