regex to parse html code

parse html code by regex

[nasser bahaj]

hi all

I am developing a code can put links at some words .

the code look like this :

$html='
<b> download firefox program now from this link <a href="http://www.download8.com/firefox">download firefox program now</a><b><br>';
echo $html;
$words2=array("firefox","program");
$links2=array("http://www.firefox.com","http://www.soft.com");
for ($i=0;$i<count($words2);$i++){
$words[]="/ ".$words2[$i]." /i";
$links[]=" <a href='$links2[$i]' style='color:red;'>$words2[$i]</a> ";
}
$count=5;
$html=preg_replace($words,$links,$html,$count);
echo $html;

now ,

this code is working well but if one of words ("firefox","program") already inside link this will damage the original link because it put link inside link .

for example this html code

$html='
<b> download firefox program now from this link <a href="http://www.download8.com/firefox">download firefox program now</a><b><br>';

I want to put this url "http://www.firefox.com" on "firefox" word but I want first to check if this word are already link (already inside <a></a> tags) , to avoid damage of existing links in the code .

I hope your help please

thank you .

[coopster]

You could use lookahead or lookbehind assertions in your regular expression to check for anchor tags before or after the matching text. Or maybe even parse the document first using the DOM functions [php.net] or perhaps Tidy functions [php.net].