Need help.. change everything between a url tag to something else automatically...

Jamez

Hello all

I need help with this 🙂 ... I have a database with 3,000 records in it and every row includes a field with some text and urls inside it. The url and number of url's on every record varies...

Heres an example of the code...

some random text here
<a href="http://www.some-url.com/randomtexthere.html?randomnumbers">random text here</a> <br><br>
some random text here
<a href="http://www.some-url.com/randomtexthere.html?randomnumbers">random text here</a><br>
blah blah more text

What i need to do.... is grab every url and change it to a variable (lets say $newurl) of my own. so the code should change to this;

some random text here
<a href="$newurl">random text here</a> <br><br>
some random text here
<a href="$newurl">random text here</a><br>
blah blah more text

whats the best way to go about doing this? I'm not a total newb but a little help would be apreciated 🙂

vaaaska

http://www.php.net/preg_replace/

Jamez

Looks good .. now how do i figure out how to make one of these "mixed patterns" ?

I have no idea what all this "[^>]?>.?" means... :eek:

vaaaska

Jamez wrote:
Looks good .. now how do i figure out how to make one of these "mixed patterns" ?

I have no idea what all this "[^>]?>.?" means... :eek:

Oh c'mon!

😉

Yeah, I'm rather not so great with them either. Here's a link that could get you started...I think if you can crack the surface some much better help than I can get you to completion:

http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/dario19990616.php3

But for starters...you really only need to deal with the numbers if the url is static (as in your exampl);

function changeURL($input)
{

$search = "http://www.some-url.com/randomtexthere.html?[0-9]";
$replace = "newurl";

return preg_replace($search,$replace,$input);
}

vaaaska

On second though, as I read this correctly now, this could require a pretty complicated regex. It also might require the use of preg_match before a preg_replace. Anyways, your on the path now...

Jamez

Here's a sample of some of the url's...

<a href="/cart/product.html?sku=688&id=3331&search=a%20word">a word</a>

<a href="http://www1.someurl.com/cart/shoppingcart.html?command=showcart&store=/cart/data/items&sku=4567&search=3123&search=a%20word">a word</a>

i also have this other problem, some of the url tags are surrounding images, and i want to make sure i don't lose the images...

  ]<a href="/cart/product.html?sku=688&id=3331&search=a%20word">
<img src="http://my.site.com/cart/folder/45371.jpg" width="30" height="40" border="0"></a>

I have the feeling this is going to take a long time to figure out 🙁

vaaaska

James, are you going to change ALL urls to just one $newurl? And, are all 3000 urls to be changed - or only ones that relate to your site (do you have external links to contend with as well)?

If all urls are going to be changed to $newurl then you could simply go after the 'href' and change it that way...this would be easy but I'm not sure it would suffice.

Explain to use in more detail, if it's not all spelled out already, the circumstances for change?

There is also mod_rewrite, but tell use what you have first...

Jamez

All urls in the database must be changed. I'll be using a variable (that changes with every record) to create the $newurl it is replaced with. But all the url's will be changed to the same thing in each record.

Jamez

anyone?