php preg_match_all: split list items and child lists - php

Question

I'm trying to split some html content using php's preg-match-all function:
<li class="cat-item"><a title="blabla" href="#">parent 1</a>
<ul class="children">
<li class="cat-item"><a title="" href="#">child 1</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="cat-item cat-item-4"><a title="blabla" href="#">father 2</a>
<ul class="children">
<li class="cat-item"><a title="" href="#">child 1</a></li>
<li class="cat-item"><a title="bla" href="#">child 2</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
I want to be able to change the link description, for example;
<a title="" href="#">child 1</a>
to
<a title="" href="#">I changed that</a>
while keeping the structure of the original html.
so far, I succeeded to split the links using :
$results = preg_match_all('/<a\s[^>]*href\s*=\s*(\"??)([^\" >]*?)\\1[^>]*>(.*)<\/a>/siU', $html, $tokens);
foreach ( $tokens[0] as $category)
{
echo $category.'<br>';
}
the drawback of this is that it discards child lists, and outputs all the list items in the same level; no distinction between parent and child.
any idea to keep original hierarchy?
thanx :)

Answer 1

use preg_replace to replace strings! something like this here:
$output = preg_replace("/^([123]0|[012][1-9]|31)(\\.|-|\/|,)(0[1-9]|1[012])(\\.|-|\/)(19[0-9]{2}|2[0-9]{3})$/","$1",$in_nn_date);
where $1 or $2 is the thing you have searched with regex and grouped in.
best would be that you use some online editor or something... like this one
and try there! hope it helps...