I need to replace certain user-entered URLs with embedded flash objects...and I'm having trouble with a regex that I'm using to match the url...I think mainly because the URLs are SEO-friendly and therefore a bit more difficult to parse
URL structure: http://www.site.com/item/item_title_that_can_include_1('_etc-32CHARACTERALPHANUMERICGUID
I need to both detect a match of an URL in that format and capture the 32CHARACTERALPHANUMERICGUID which is always placed after the - in the url
something like this:
$ret = preg_replace('#http://www\.site\.com/item/([^-])-([a-zA-Z0-9]+)#','<embed>itemid=$2</embed>', $ret);
For some reason, the above does not find a match for an URL in the specified format. I'm new to regexes, so I think I'm missing something fairly obvious.
You should check out parse_url()
.
Examine the results - it was made for parsing URLs. You'll be able to extract the data you require from the tokens returned.
If you are regex crazy, try this...
/^http:\/\/www\.site\.com\/item\/[^-]*\-([a-zA-Z0-9]{32})$/
Your example is almost there, but...
[^-]
, you still need a quantifier. I placed *
, or 0 or more.^
) and end ($
) anchors if the string is always exactly like that.{32}
quantifier.