[RESOLVED] preg_replace help to convert table-design to CSS design

marcnyc

I am trying to convert some table-based pages to CSS with an automated script...
After having removed the TR and TD tags, I wanted to proceed to remove the TABLE tags and replace them with DIV tags maintaining the alignment, but it doesn't seem to work...

I have written this:

$int = preg_replace('#<table(.*?)center">#is','<div align="center">',$int);

to replace things like these:
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10" align="center">

with this:
<div align="center">

what is wrong with my code?

NogDog

Is center" always the last thing in the <table> tag, and is it always double-quoted?

Also, to avoid including non-centered table tags which are later followed by a centered one, I might try:

'#<table[^>]*?center">#is'

PS: As the "align" attribute is deprecated, you might want to consider assigning a class to it, instead, then define the desired alignment for that class in your stylesheet.

marcnyc

yes center is always the last thing and it's always double-quoted but it still doesn't work...

what does [^>] do exactly?

so align is deprecated for divs as well?

bradgrafelman

marcnyc;10950452 wrote:
what does [^>] do exactly?

Matches any character that isn't a '>'. The [] square brackets define a character class, and the leading '^' negates the whole class (meaning any character which doesn't appear in that list of characters will be matched).

EDIT: Here is a link to a page on a (very helpful) website that talks about the relevant regular expression syntax in great detail.

marcnyc;10950452 wrote:
so align is deprecated for divs as well?

The entire attribute has been deprecated since HTML 4.01 (released in December of 1999) as far as I can tell. Here's a link to the relevant W3C page.

So yes, you're using an attribute that has been deprecated over a decade ago. 🙂

marcnyc

Haha... wow that makes me feel horrible and outdated...

Anyway, to get us back on track, I tried the [^>] and it didn't work either unfortunately...

NogDog

This worked for me:

<?php
$int = <<<EOD
<p>yadda yadda yadda</p>
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10" align="center">
<p>blah blah blah</p>
EOD;

$int = preg_replace('#<table[^>]*?center">#is', '<div class="center">', $int);
echo "<pre>".htmlspecialchars($int)."</pre>";

Output:

<p>yadda yadda yadda</p>
<div class="center">
<p>blah blah blah</p>

Hopefully you can figure out what is different about this test case and the actual text you are working with.

marcnyc

That's really bizarre... your code does work, but when I run my variable through it, it doesn't work for me...
It's strange because this is what I am trying to match (I am pasting from my variable):

<table width="100&#37;" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" align="center">

and it looks just like yours!

marcnyc

I found the problem... I had an addslashes() being performed BEFORE this preg_replace so the condition was never met because center"> was really center\">

Thanks for all your help NogDog!

I just have one side question I am curious about...
Since I know now to use <div class, I was wondering, is it correct/compliant to write <div class="center"> in order to center something? or does that imply that I then have to create a class called center in my CSS stylesheet and then make that centered?

I ask because I noticed that without me creating the CSS definition the class="center", left and right, does the alignment as I expected it, but before I noticed that I thought I'd have to define those classes in my stylesheet...

laserlight

marcnyc wrote:
Since I know now to use <div class, I was wondering, is it correct/compliant to write <div class="center"> in order to center something? or does that imply that I then have to create a class called center in my CSS stylesheet and then make that centered?

You would need to create a CSS class named "center". However, one school of thought is that such a name can become a misnomer: suppose that you later want to move all elements of that class to the left; you would then have to either rename the class (and thus have to alter your HTML code for a purely stylistic change), or live with a strangely named "center" class whose associated elements are not in the center.

marcnyc wrote:
I ask because I noticed that without me creating the CSS definition the class="center", left and right, does the alignment as I expected it, but before I noticed that I thought I'd have to define those classes in my stylesheet...

Perhaps it is just by coincidence that another rule is applied.

marcnyc

must be coincidence because it works beautifully ;-)