How to replace custom bbcode tag containing structured content?

Question

I have a string as this one: "[dr]azAZ09-09[/dr]"

Example: [dr]my name here-25[/dr]

I want to get all the elements:

my name here
-
25

How can I write the preg_split() expression (or another function)?

Answer 1

It is unclear whether you need to do a simple preg_replace() or preg_replace_callback() (because you "need to do other things in the php code").

The best solution that I can offer you now is to use this pattern that requires [dr]|[/dr] tagging and a - substring delimiter followed by one or more digits.

Pattern: (Demo)

#  ⬐⬐⬐------------⬐⬐⬐⬐--------------- match opening and closing tags
#  ￬￬￬￬￬           ￬￬￬￬￬￬￬ 
  ~\[dr](.+?)-(\d+)\[/dr]~
#        ￪￪￪   ⬑⬑⬑---------------------- capture one or more digits
#        ⬑⬑----------------------------- capture one or more of any character

With these two captured substrings, you can use preg_replace() to generate a new dynamic replacements string.

Code: (Demo)

$bbcode = '[dr]my name here-25[/dr]';
echo preg_replace('~\[dr](.+?)-(\d+)\[/dr]~', '<div>Reply to: <a href="user.php?id=$2">$1</a></div>', $bbcode);

Output:

<div>Reply to: <a href="user.php?id=25">my name here</a></div>