Regular Expressions and XML Pagination

mTorbin

Hey folks,

I have XML files that I need to correctly tab so that they're human readable. The code I've been trying to get to work is here:

<?php
$errorFile = "myFile.xml";

$fileReader = fopen($errorFile, "r");
$fileData = fread($fileReader, filesize($errorFile));

$fileData = preg_replace("<[a-z]+>","<[a-z]+>\n",$fileData);

echo($fileData . "\n\n\n");
?>

You can test this with pretty much any xml file that is all on one line. As you can see my regular expression isn't working and I'm not sure why (since I'm new to regEx). Any suggestions? My basic goal is to say:

1) "If you find '< /[anything here] >' then replace it with '< /[anything here] >\n'."
2) "If you find '< [anything here] />' then replace it with '< [anything here] />\n'."

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

nrg_alpha

Are you actually looking for < and > characters (as in tags)? If so, the problem is that by using those characters as the first and last in your pattern, those are being treated as delimiters instead... try using something other than < and > (as a matter of taste, I like using the hash mark).. also, for your replacement part, you need to reference $1 as reusing your capture.. so perhaps this would work for you?

$fileData = preg_replace('#(<[^>]+>)#', "$1".'\n', $fileData);

In this case, I am capturing anything between the < and > characters... but if you only need to look for and capture [a-z /], then simply put that in instead.