PHP preg_replace to insert string inside an existing string - php

Question

Unfortunately I really cannot get my head around regular expressions so my last resort is to ask the help of you fine people.
I have this existing code:
<li id="id-21" class="listClass" data-author="newbie">
<div class="someDiv">
<span class="spanClass">Some content</span>
</div>
<div class="controls faint">
Link 2
Link 3
</div>
</li>
Due to a number of reasons, I have to use preg_replace to inject an additional piece of code:
Link 1
I think you can guess where that should go, but for the sake of clarity, my desire is for the resulting string to look like:
<li id="id-21" class="listClass" data-author="newbie">
<div class="someDiv">
<span class="spanClass">Some content</span>
</div>
<div class="controls faint">
Link 1
Link 2
Link 3
</div>
</li>
Can anyone help me with the appropriate regular expression to achieve this?

Answer 1

try this
$html = '<li id="id-21" class="listClass" data-author="newbie">
<div class="someDiv">
<span class="spanClass">Some content</span>
</div>
<div class="controls faint">
Link 2
Link 3
</div>
</li>';
$eleName = 'a';
$eleAttr = 'href';
$eleAttrValue = 'link2';
$addBefore = 'Link 1';
$result = regexAddBefore($html, $eleName, $eleAttr, $eleAttrValue, $addBefore);
var_dump($result);
function regexAddBefore($subject, $eleName, $eleAttr, $eleAttrValue, $addBefore){
$regex = "/(<\s*".$eleName."[^>]*".$eleAttr."\s*=\s*(\"|\')?\s*".$eleAttrValue."\s*(\"|\')?[^>]*>)/s";
$replace = $addBefore."\r\n$1";
$subject = preg_replace($regex, $replace, $subject);
return $subject;
}

Answer 2

I can suggest two things (Although I couldn't understand your problem clearly)
$newStr = preg_replace ('/<[^>]*>/', ' ', $htmlText);
this will remove all the html tags from the string. I don't know if it will be usefull for you.
Another recommendation would be to use strip_tags function. The second parameter of strip_tags is optional. You can define the tags you want to keep with the help of 2nd parameter.
$str = '<li id="id-21" class="listClass" data-author="newbie">
<div class="someDiv">
<span class="spanClass">Some content</span>
</div>
<div class="controls faint">
Link 2
Link 3
</div>
</li>';
echo strip_tags ($str,'<a>');
This will give you an output just with the links and whatever text in the html string.
Sorry if this also doesn't help.