How would I, given a string like this (for example), remove all break (<br>,<br />, and any other form) tags from only the beginning and end of the string?
Original string:
<br>Hello, World! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU7W7qe2R0A<br><br>
Output:
Hello, World! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU7W7qe2R0A
If the original string has <br> tags in the middle of the string, i.e.:
<br>Hello, World!<br><br>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU7W7qe2R0A<br><br>
It should output:
Hello, World!<br><br>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU7W7qe2R0A
How would I achieve this results?
You could use preg_replace and a regular expression like this.
$s = '<br><br /><Br ><br />Hello, World!<br><br />testing 123<br ><BR /><br><br />';
$stripped = preg_replace('/^(<br\s*\/?>)*|(<br\s*\/?>)*$/i', '', $s);
var_dump($stripped);
Outputs:
string(57) "Hello, World!<br><br />testing 123"
I use this :
<?
$data = '<br>Hello, World!<br><br><br /><br>';
$filter = array('<br>','<br />');
$data = str_replace($filter,'',$data);
var_dump($data);
To match <br> at the beginning and the end of a string use:
(?:\A<br\s*/?\s*>)+|(?:<br\s*/?\s*>)+$
$result = preg_replace('%(?:\A<br\s*/?\s*>)+|(?:<br\s*/?\s*>)+$%i', '', $text);
A more generalized regex is:
(?:\A<[a-z\d]+\s*/?\s*>)+|(?:<[a-z\d]+\s*/?\s*>)+$
$result = preg_replace('%(?:\A<[a-z\d]+\s*/?\s*>)+|(?:<[a-z\d]+\s*/?\s*>)+$%i', '', $text);
This is what I use in my projects :
Code below will handle : <br>, <br >, <br >, <br/>, <br />, <br />
$data = "<br><br ><br/><br />test1<br><br ><br />test2<br><br ><br/><br />";
$str = preg_replace('/^(<br\s*?\/?>)+|(<br\s*\/?>)+$/', '', $data);
echo $str;