regexp find and seperate custom tags in a string

[Chippo]

Hi
I am working on a CMS system for myself, Im having a bit of trouble with some reg exp.
Say i have a text string like this...

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{{startcontent_categories_box}}blah blah blah<br />
<br />
$p</p>
<table cellspacing="1" cellpadding="1" width="200" border="1">
    <tbody>
        <tr>
            <td>username</td>
            <td>password</td>
        </tr>
        <tr id="rowstart">
            <td style="width: 250px"><strong>$username</strong></td>
            <td style="width: 250px">$userpassword</td>
        </tr>
    </tbody>
</table>
<p><br />
{{endcontent_categories_box}}

what I want to be able to do is run a reg exp which will find things like this on the page for me and seperate the content name, the start and end tags and the content within them.
content name would be 'categories_box'
start tag would be {{startcontent_categories_box}}
end tag would be {{endcontent_categories_box}}
and the content within would be all the html between the 2 tags.
Is this possible?
I have been trying myself but I am useless when it comes to reg exp, what I tried was...

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/{{startcontent_/\d{2,50}/}}(.*?){{endcontent_/\d{2,50}/}}$/mg

If someone could help me with this it would be greatly appreciated

[spinal007]

. matches any character apart from new line and carriage return.
use this instead: [\s\S] - which means any whitespace and non-whitespace character (everything)

On a separate note, I know "g" is global and "i" is ignore case, but what's the "m" for? (in /mg at the end of the regexp)

[Chippo]

Hi
I tried what you suggested but couldn't seem to get it to work where do you put the [\s\S]?

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var re = new RegExp("\{\{startcontent_\w{2,50}\}\}[\s\S]\{\{endcontent_\w{2,50}\}\}$/gi");

[spinal007]

[\s\S] instead of .
...so....
/{{startcontent_/\d{2,50}/}}([\s\S]*?){{endcontent_/\d{2,50}/}}$/mg

[Chippo]

Hi I tried what you said but still no result, someone else suggested this...
/\{\{startcontent_\w{2,50}\}\}([.\s\n\r]*)\{\{endcontent_\w{2,50}\}\}/i

but that didnt work either unfortunatly

[Chippo]

its alrite actually mate, nice one for your help. Its definitly appreciated. Think i'll just make my cms work differently. Cheers anyway

[spinal007]

I have my own CMS and I use custom tags much more complicated than that - with properties and other rubbish. I can help you make this work.

Firstly, \s = all white space, including \r \n \t and so on. I can only assume whoever suggested you try that alternative doesn't have much experience with reg exp.

Secondly, you keep playing with your switches, but do you actually know what they mean? First you had, /mg, then you tried /i.
/i = ignore case
/g = global match (finds as many matches as possible)
/ig = ignore case & global match
I have never seen or heard of /m. I left the /m switch in my suggestion because I didn't know (and still don't know) what platform you're working on, but I guess /m may be the problem.

Problems I found in your regexp:
- \d will only matche DIGITS, not letters. it would match startcontent_1234 but not startcontent_hello.
- you had a / before the end }}, so you were actually searching for {{startcontent_1234/}}

So here's my revised suggestion:
- [\s\S]*? - lazy match anything between tags (this will work)
- escape all literal symbols such as {, }, / and _ (to make sure)
- /ig switch (to make sure)
- use \w instead of \d

Code: Select all

/\{\{startcontent\_/\w{2,50}\}\}([\s\S]*?)\{\{endcontent\_/\w{2,50}\}\}$/ig