Writing regular expression in PHP to wrap <img> with <a> [duplicate]

Question

I want to make it so that any occurance of an image gets wrapped with a link to the image source

How can I write a pattern, in PHP so that I can find these variations, which are scattered throughout text coming from the database:

<img src='/dir/dir2/image1.jpg' alt='blah blah blah'>
<img src="/dir/dir2/image2.jpg" alt="blah blah blah" />
<img src="/dir/dir2/image3.jpg" />

In all cases, I want them to appear within an link.

So you are converting <img src="A"/> into <a href="A"><img src="A"/></a>? — Ming-Tang
– Ming-Tang, Commented Dec 16, 2010 at 2:00
Obligatory: stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/… :) (In your case it's probably manageable, but Cthulu still applies.) — deceze
– deceze ♦, Commented Dec 16, 2010 at 2:00

Trufa · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-16 02:46:57Z

23

preg_replace("{<img\\s*(.*?)src=('.*?'|\".*?\"|[^\\s]+)(.*?)\\s*/?>}ims", '<a href=$2><img $1src=$2 $3/></a>', $str)

handles all non-practical cases

alt text

edited Dec 16, 2010 at 2:46

Trufa

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answered Dec 16, 2010 at 2:08

Ming-Tang

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4 Comments

gio Over a year ago

Thanks SHiNKiROU you are my hero

Jonah Over a year ago

Aghghghghhhh!!! Regex-based HTML parsing!

MilkyWay90 Over a year ago

You dare violate the rules of bobince

hanshenrik Over a year ago

bugged, as a regex approach is bound to be. this regex fails on <img data-license-src="foo.com/LICENSE" src="foo.com/img1.png"/> , it will link to the liecense rather than the image. seriously, use a friggin html parser, like DOMDocument.

Jonah · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-16 02:00:20Z

12

My I recommend the PHP DOM with loadHTML() instead of regex?

http://php.net/dom

http://php.net/domdocument.loadhtml

answered Dec 16, 2010 at 2:00

Jonah

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1 Comment

KJC2009 Over a year ago

Those are the good sites to use.

jcolebrand · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-16 02:07:55Z

8

May I recommend using jQuery and use this snippet instead, it should be easier (and we all love jQuery to brute-force any problem ;] )

$('img').wrap( function(){ return '<a href="' + this.src + '"></a>'; });

or is it

$('img').wrap( function(){ return '<a href="' + $(this).attr('src') + '"></a>'; });

Anyways, fun times to be had, using jQuery to manipulate the DOM clientside ;)

answered Dec 16, 2010 at 2:07

jcolebrand

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2 Comments

jcolebrand Over a year ago

I'm upvoting the other two for actually using PHP to fix the problem, but seriously, DOM element wrapping like this is pretty easy in jQuery, requires little effort on your part, and allows you to more tightly focus the areas to be "altered" if you suddenly decide that ... for instance, header images ... don't need to be selected. I'm not saying mine is necessarily the way to go, but just pointing out that there are some benefits to the awkward solution.

Peter Mortensen Over a year ago

Related: jQuery

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Writing regular expression in PHP to wrap <img> with <a> [duplicate]

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