Get string between - Find all occurrences PHP

Question

I found this function which finds data between two strings of text, html or whatever.

How can it be changed so it will find all occurrences? Every data between every

Answer 1

One possible approach:

function getContents($str, $startDelimiter, $endDelimiter) {
  $contents = array();
  $startDelimiterLength = strlen($startDelimiter);
  $endDelimiterLength = strlen($endDelimiter);
  $startFrom = $contentStart = $contentEnd = 0;
  while (false !== ($contentStart = strpos($str, $startDelimiter, $startFrom))) {
    $contentStart += $startDelimiterLength;
    $contentEnd = strpos($str, $endDelimiter, $contentStart);
    if (false === $contentEnd) {
      break;
    }
    $contents[] = substr($str, $contentStart, $contentEnd - $contentStart);
    $startFrom = $contentEnd + $endDelimiterLength;
  }

  return $contents;
}

Usage:

$sample = '<start>One<end>aaa<start>TwoTwo<end>Three<start>Four<end><start>Five<end>';
print_r( getContents($sample, '<start>', '<end>') );
/*
Array
(
    [0] => One
    [1] => TwoTwo
    [2] => Four
    [3] => Five
)
*/ 

Demo.

Answer 2

There was some great sollutions here, however not perfekt for extracting parts of code from say HTML which was my problem right now, as I need to get script blocks out of the HTML before compressing the HTML. So building on @raina77ow original sollution, expanded by @Cas Tuyn I get this one:

$test_strings = [
    '0<p>a</p>1<p>b</p>2<p>c</p>3',
    '0<p>a</p>1<p>b</p>2<p>c</p>',
    '<p>a</p>1<p>b</p>2<p>c</p>3',
    '<p>a</p>1<p>b</p>2<p>c</p>',
    '<p></p>1<p>b'
];

/**
* Seperate a block of code by sub blocks. Example, removing all <script>...<script> tags from HTML kode
* 
* @param string $str, text block
* @param string $startDelimiter, string to match for start of block to be extracted
* @param string $endDelimiter, string to match for ending the block to be extracted
* @return array [all full blocks, whats left of string]
*/
function getDelimitedStrings($str, $startDelimiter, $endDelimiter) {
    $contents = array();
    $startDelimiterLength = strlen($startDelimiter);
    $endDelimiterLength = strlen($endDelimiter);
    $startFrom = $contentStart = $contentEnd = $outStart = $outEnd = 0;
    while (false !== ($contentStart = strpos($str, $startDelimiter, $startFrom))) {
        $contentStart += $startDelimiterLength;
        $contentEnd = strpos($str, $endDelimiter, $contentStart);
        $outEnd = $contentStart - 1;
        if (false === $contentEnd) {
            break;
        }
        $contents['in'][] = substr($str, ($contentStart-$startDelimiterLength), ($contentEnd + ($startDelimiterLength*2) +1) - $contentStart);
        if( $outStart ){
            $contents['out'][] = substr($str, ($outStart+$startDelimiterLength+1), $outEnd - $outStart - ($startDelimiterLength*2));
        } else if( ($outEnd - $outStart - ($startDelimiterLength-1)) > 0 ){
            $contents['out'][] = substr($str, $outStart, $outEnd - $outStart - ($startDelimiterLength-1));
        }
        $startFrom = $contentEnd + $endDelimiterLength;
        $startFrom = $contentEnd;
        $outStart = $startFrom;
    }
    $total_length = strlen($str);
    $current_position = $outStart + $startDelimiterLength + 1;
    if( $current_position < $total_length )
        $contents['out'][] = substr($str, $current_position);

    return $contents;
}

foreach($test_strings AS $string){
    var_dump( getDelimitedStrings($string, '<p>', '</p>') );
}

This will extract all

wlements with the possible innerHTML aswell, giving this result:

array (size=2)
'in' => array (size=3)
    0 => string '<p>a</p>' (length=8)
    1 => string '<p>b</p>' (length=8)
    2 => string '<p>c</p>' (length=8)
'out' => array (size=4)
    0 => string '0' (length=1)
    1 => string '1' (length=1)
    2 => string '2' (length=1)
    3 => string '3' (length=1)

array (size=2)
'in' => array (size=3)
    0 => string '<p>a</p>' (length=8)
    1 => string '<p>b</p>' (length=8)
    2 => string '<p>c</p>' (length=8)
'out' => array (size=3)
    0 => string '0' (length=1)
    1 => string '1' (length=1)
    2 => string '2' (length=1)

array (size=2)
'in' => array (size=3)
    0 => string '<p>a</p>' (length=8)
    1 => string '<p>b</p>' (length=8)
    2 => string '<p>c</p>' (length=8)
'out' => array (size=3)
    0 => string '1' (length=1)
    1 => string '2' (length=1)
    2 => string '3' (length=1)

array (size=2)
'in' => array (size=3)
    0 => string '<p>a</p>' (length=8)
    1 => string '<p>b</p>' (length=8)
    2 => string '<p>c</p>' (length=8)
'out' => array (size=2)
    0 => string '1' (length=1)
    1 => string '2' (length=1)

array (size=2)
'in' => array (size=1)
    0 => string '<p></p>' (length=7)
'out' => array (size=1)
    0 => string '1<p>b' (length=5)

You can see a demo here: 3v4l.org/TQLmn

Answer 3

You can do this using regex:

function getStringsBetween($string, $start, $end)
{
    $pattern = sprintf(
        '/%s(.*?)%s/',
        preg_quote($start),
        preg_quote($end)
    );
    preg_match_all($pattern, $string, $matches);

    return $matches[1];
}

Answer 4

I also needed the text outside the pattern. So I changed the answer from raina77ow above a little:

function get_delimited_strings($str, $startDelimiter, $endDelimiter) {
    $contents = array();
    $startDelimiterLength = strlen($startDelimiter);
    $endDelimiterLength = strlen($endDelimiter);
    $startFrom = $contentStart = $contentEnd = $outStart = $outEnd = 0;
    while (false !== ($contentStart = strpos($str, $startDelimiter, $startFrom))) {
        $contentStart += $startDelimiterLength;
        $contentEnd = strpos($str, $endDelimiter, $contentStart);
        $outEnd = $contentStart - 1;
        if (false === $contentEnd) {
            break;
        }
        $contents['in'][] = substr($str, $contentStart, $contentEnd - $contentStart);
        $contents['out'][] = substr($str, $outStart, $outEnd - $outStart);
        $startFrom = $contentEnd + $endDelimiterLength;
        $outStart = $startFrom;
    }
    $contents['out'][] = substr($str, $outStart, $contentEnd - $outStart);
    return $contents;
}

Usage:

    $str = "Bore layer thickness [2 mm] instead of [1,25 mm] with [0,1 mm] deviation.";
    $cas = get_delimited_strings($str, "[", "]");

gives:

array(2) { 
    ["in"]=> array(3) { 
        [0]=> string(4) "2 mm" 
        [1]=> string(7) "1,25 mm" 
        [2]=> string(6) "0,1 mm" 
    } 
    ["out"]=> array(4) { 
        [0]=> string(21) "Bore layer thickness " 
        [1]=> string(12) " instead of " 
        [2]=> string(6) " with " 
        [3]=> string(10) " deviation" 
    } 
}

Answer 5

I love to use explode to get string between two string. this function also works for multiple occurrences.

function GetIn($str,$start,$end){
    $p1 = explode($start,$str);
    for($i=1;$i<count($p1);$i++){
        $p2 = explode($end,$p1[$i]);
        $p[] = $p2[0];
    }
    return $p;
}

Answer 6

I needed to find all these occurences between specific first and last tag and change them somehow and get back changed string.

So I added this small code to raina77ow approach after the function.

        $sample = '<start>One<end> aaa <start>TwoTwo<end> Three <start>Four<end> aaaaa <start>Five<end>';
        $sample_temp = getContents($sample, '<start>', '<end>');
        $i = 1;
        foreach($sample_temp as $value) {
            $value2 = $value.'-'.$i; //there you can change the variable
            $sample=str_replace('<start>'.$value.'<end>',$value2,$sample);
            $i = ++$i;
        }
        echo $sample;

Now output sample has deleted tags and all strings between them has added number like this:

One-1 aaa TwoTwo-2 Three Four-3 aaaaa Five-4

But you can do whatever else with them. Maybe could be helpful for someone.