search and replace question

[jonnyfolk]

Hi,

I have an xml file which is not formatted in a convenient way.

I need to change the various references:

<col name="price">93147</col>
<col name="value">93147</col>

to

<price>93147</price>
<value>93147</value>

in perl I would use something like:

if ( $var =~ m|<col name="(.*?)">(.*?)</col>|g ) {
  $var =~ s|<col name=".*?">.*?</col>|<$1>$2</$1>|g;
}

(untested!)

What is the best way of tackling this in php?

[Feral]

I would use the preg_replace function along with the same type of regular expressions that you would use in perl

[Bioshox]

I think you may have the wrong forum...

[jonnyfolk]

Sorry - is this not the php forum?

[Bioshox]

Oh, my appologies, I thought you said in Perl!

What exactly are you trying to do? If your trying to decalair the names of the colums by using <tags> this wont work,

<col name="price">93147</col>
<col name="value">93147</col>

What you have already done is the correct way of doing it.

[jonnyfolk]

Hi, thanks for your reply. I need the 1st example to end up as the second. There are many <col name= tags so I need the script to pick up the name and then replace with the new tags accordingly. I see preg_replace might be useful but how will I pick up the name tag?
sorry for my ignorance...

[Bioshox]

Could I see the rest of the script, code is good :3

[jonnyfolk]

$strXML = get_content($strURLtoGo);

outputs like I described above. If you know a bit of perl you'll understand what I'm after.
I need to search/replace on $strXML

Cheers

Solution:

$pattern = '/<col name="(.*?)">(.*?)<\/col>/';
$replacement = '<$1>$2</$1>';
echo preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $strXML);