Question

this text block represents the original external source that is a variable:

// the following characters are not-consistent 
text here
// the following characters are consistent
♥ text1
♥ text2
♥ text3
// the following characters are consistent
some more text here

i want to remove everything except for "text here" and i have to do this in ‘parts’ as other text may be present (ie i can’t just remove everything after "text here").

i can remove "some more text here" but am having trouble trying to target and remove the lines beginning with ♥ (or ♥ as they are currently being stored in the database).

so these are my variables

// this is the original external source

$part_one = $external_source; 

// this is the variable that is not working yet

$part_one_a = ;

// this replaces "some more text here" with nothing

$part_one_b = str_replace("some more text here", " ", $part_one);

// this concatenates the variables $part_one_a and $part_one_b

$final = $part_one_a . $part_one_b;

thank you.

update

to be more specific i need a way to remove text such as this:

♥ link_one:  http://link_one_here.com/
♥ link_two:  http://link_two_here.com/
♥ link_three:  http://link_three_here.com/

update two

i’ve managed to remove all unwanted items with str_replace on an array.

the only thing i cannot target and therefore remove is the ♥.

i have tried targeting it with:

• ♥ (this is the value that is currently being stored in the
  database)
• ♥ (after i applied a htmlentities to the string)

and no luck – the ♥ is still being displayed. if anyone can tell me how i can target ♥ it would be much appreciated and this question would be resolved.

thank you.

Answer 1

the solution was:

1. Do a str_replace on an array to target and remove specific portions of text.
2. Create a regex and define acceptable values.
3. Do a preg_replace on non-acceptable values.

this resulted in all the desired values being shown without instances of non-acceptable characters.

the code for the last two steps is below:

// this is the original external source

$part_one = $external_source; 

// create a regex

$regex
= '~'
. '['
. '^'
. 'A-Z'
. '0-9'
. ' '
. '!_:/,.#$-'
. ']'
. '~'
. 'i'
;

// clean the string

$part_one_cleaned = preg_replace($regex, NULL, $part_one);