Question

My value is stored within a string inside (). I need to return this value to check if it’s empty.

$variable = "<a href=\"http://www.link-url.ext\">My Link</a> (55)";
$value = "55"; // how do I get the value?

if($value < 1) { 
    // no link
} else {
    // show link
}

This code would be used to show links with no posts in them in WordPress.

Answer 1

$variable = "My Link (55) plus more text";
preg_match('/\((.*?)\)/',$variable,$matches);

$value = $matches[1];
echo $value;