I am trying to get this regex to match (once or twice) any occurrence of these strings: border-box|padding-box|content-box
Here is the regex:
((?:border-box|padding-box|content-box){1,2})
Here is the sample string:
background: url("my image.jpg") left right 2px 50% 75% repeat-x round scroll border-box padding-box;
Expected result:
border-box padding-box
Actual result:
Array
(
[0] => border-box
[1] => border-box
)
Oh and btw I am using this site to test my regex: http://www.phpliveregex.com/ Note: I am using preg_match not preg_match_all
The problem is that your pattern requires the repetitions to occur immediately after each other, with no whitespace between.
Try adding a \s* after the alternation to allow for optional whitespace between the repetitions, like this:
(?:(?:border-box|padding-box|content-box)\s*){1,2}
Or even better:
(?:(?:border|padding|content)-box\s*){1,2}
Note that because of the *, this will also match a string like border-boxborder-box (no whitespace between repetitions). If this is a problem you can try a pattern like this:
(?:(?:border|padding|content)-box)(?:\s+(?:border|padding|content)-box)?
Note that I've removed the surrounding (…) since this group would always be identical to the entire match, so it's almost certainly not necessary.
Solution using preg_match_all()
You're trying to match multiple values, so use preg_match_all() instead of preg_match():
$ok = preg_match_all('/(border-box|padding-box|content-box)/', $str, $matches);
if ($ok) {
$result = implode(' ', $matches[0]);
var_dump($result);
}
Output:
string(22) "border-box padding-box"
Solution using preg_match()
Your current regular expression doesn't work because it doesn't take whitespace into account. You can modify the regular expression as follows.
((?:(?:border-box|padding-box|content-box)\s*){1,2})
Explanation:
(?:border-box|padding-box|content-box) - non-capturing group\s* - match any whitespace character (shorthand for the character class[ \t\f ]) zero or more times{1,2} - match the previous group between 1 and 2 timesOutput:
string(22) "border-box padding-box"