Simple regex on string

Question

I'm working on a simple mention system and in my PHP script and I need to extract client:6 from the larger text where one or more @mention like @[John Doe (#6)](client:6) will be present.

Ex. This is my text how do you like it @John and do you have any thoughts @Jane

In php the string will look like.

This is my text how do you like it @[John Doe (#6)](client:6) and do you have any thoughts @[Jane Doe (#7)](client:7)

and i need to get an array with array('client:6','client:7')

Yes a lot on regex101.com, but i don't know how it works so i'm just guessing and getting no where. — Christian
– Christian, Commented Nov 20, 2021 at 14:05

Jan · Accepted Answer · 2021-11-20 14:19:13Z

2

One of many possible ways would be

@\[[^][]+\]\s*\(\K[^()]+

See a demo on regex101.com.

In terms of regular expressions, this boils down to

@          # "@" literally
\[         # "[" literally
[^][]+     # not "[" nor "]" as many times as possible
\]\s*      # followed by "]" literally + whitespaces, eventually
\(         # you name it - "(" literally
\K         # forget all what has been matched that far
[^()]+     # not "(" nor ")"

In PHP this could be

<?php

$data = "This is my text how do you like it @[John Doe (#6)](client:6) and do you have any thoughts @[Jane Doe (#7)](client:7)";

$regex = "~@\[[^][]+\]\s*\(\K[^()]+~";

preg_match_all($regex, $data, $matches);

print_r($matches);

?>

And would yield

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => client:6
            [1] => client:7
        )

)

See a demo on ideone.com.

edited Nov 20, 2021 at 14:19

answered Nov 20, 2021 at 14:11

Jan

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1 Comment

Christian Over a year ago

This seems to be working nicely on your demo. I'll test it out.

AlexBack · Accepted Answer · 2021-11-20 13:58:14Z

1

\w+:\d+ should work.

In the sentence :

This is my text how do you like it @John Doe (#6) and do you have any thoughts @Jane Doe (#7)

It should find client:6 and client:7 .

You can try your regex live using https://regexr.com/ for example.

answered Nov 20, 2021 at 13:58

AlexBack

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2 Comments

Christian Over a year ago

Cool that works, but how to make it a bit better so it will only catch entries that begins with @. Just so it won't catch if i just write client:10 with out writing @[John Smith](client:10).

Christian Over a year ago

It could also be an idea to first get an array of all @ like array('@[John Smith](client:10)',@[Jane Smith](client:12)) and loop through them to get the specific client:10

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