Find multiple substrings within a string with unknown ending

Question

We have content of a page which has multiple instances of get_template_part in them. We want to grab them in an array do eval on them so we could include those template parts as well.

The problem is we know the beginning "get_template_part" and the ending "');" but the ending is the same for a lot of similar instances we don't want to grab.

How do we grab only the ending of get_template_part and disclude all others

Example of a String we want to include: <?php get_template_part( 'template-parts/breadcrumbs' ); ?>

I tried the following function which accepts a haystack and 2 needles and returns the matching string but then again the second needle is no way exclusive to the first needle

function get_substring_part($haystack, $needle, $needle2, $find) {

$lastPos_one = 0;
$lastPos_two = 0;
$positions_one = array();
$positions_two = array();

while (($lastPos_one = strpos($haystack, $needle, $lastPos_one))!== false) {
    $positions_one[] = $lastPos_one;
    $lastPos_one = $lastPos_one + strlen($needle);
}
foreach ($positions_one as $value_start) {
    $return[]['start'] =  $value_start;
}

while (($lastPos_two = strpos($haystack, $needle2, $lastPos_two))!== false) {
    $positions_two[] = $lastPos_two;
    $lastPos_two = $lastPos_two + strlen($needle2);
}
foreach ($positions_two as $value_end) {
    $return[]['end'] =  $value_end;
}

$counter = 0;
foreach ($return as $positions) {
    $string['start'] = $positions['start'];
    $string['end'] = $positions['end'];
    $var = substr($haystack, $positions['start'], $positions['end']);


    if (strpos($var, $find) !== false) {
        $string['string'] = substr($haystack, $positions['start'], $positions['end']);
    }
    $counter++;
}

return $string;
}

Im using this function with the following attributes:

get_substring_part($content, 'get_template_part', ');', 'get_template_part')

Please add a sample string with what you are trying to grab and what to exclude — Igor Ilic
– Igor Ilic, Commented Feb 4, 2020 at 13:50
Can you show all the instances of get_template_part at once and show the desired result? — mighty_dev
– mighty_dev, Commented Feb 4, 2020 at 14:06

AbraCadaver · Accepted Answer · 2020-02-04 14:35:00Z

1

The full matches will be in $matches[0] and what is in between the ' ' will be in $matches[1]. You can move the ( ) to get more or less and add the <?php if you need it:

preg_match_all("/get_template_part\s*\(\s*'(.+?)'\s*\);?/", $template, $matches);
print_r($matches);

Match get_template_part then \s* space 0 or more
Then ( then \s* space 0 or more
Then ' then (.+?) capture . characters +? 1 or more lazy
Then ' then \s* space 0 or more then ) then ; optional ?

edited Feb 4, 2020 at 14:35

answered Feb 4, 2020 at 14:08

AbraCadaver

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6 Comments

Fahad Sohail Over a year ago

Worked like a charm. Let me debug this more and ill mark this as correct

Cid Over a year ago

Let's hope you won't have things such as get_template_part(generate_part()), or get_template_part('look/someone/put/brackets()')

Fahad Sohail Over a year ago

All working fine expect these: <?php get_template_part( 'template-parts/frontpage/section', 'popular' ) ?> <?php get_template_part( 'template-parts/frontpage/section', 'videos' ) ?>

AbraCadaver Over a year ago

@Cid: Actually the parentheses don't cause a problem. Maybe the absence of quotes ' but they showed them in the question.

Cid Over a year ago

a PHP parser would maybe suits rather this need rather than RegEx

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