PHP preg_replace: Replace all anchor tags in text with their href value with Regex

I want to replace all anchor tags within a text with their href value, but my pattern does not work right.

$str = 'This is a text with multiple anchor tags. This is the first one: <a href="https://www.link1.com/" title="Link 1">Link 1</a> and this one the second: <a href="https://www.link2.com/" title="Link 2">Link 2</a> after that a lot of other text. And here the 3rd one: <a href="https://www.link3.com/" title="Link 3">Link 3</a> Some other text.';
$test = preg_replace("/<a\s.+href=['|\"]([^\"\']*)['|\"].*>[^<]*<\/a>/i",'\1', $str);
echo $test;

At the end the text should look like this:

This is a text with multiple anchor tags. This is the first one: https://www.link1.com/ and this one the second: https://www.link2.com/ after that a lot of other text. And here the 3rd one: https://www.link3.com/ Some other text.

Thank you very much!

Solution 1:

Just don't.

Use a parser instead.

$dom = new DOMDocument();
// since you have a fragment, wrap it in a <body>
$dom->loadHTML("<body>".$str."</body>");
$links = $dom->getElementsByTagName("a");
while($link = $links[0]) {
    $link->parentNode->insertBefore(new DOMText($link->getAttribute("href")),$link);
    $link->parentNode->removeChild($link);
}
$result = $dom->saveHTML($dom->getElementsByTagName("body")[0]);
// remove <body>..</body> wrapper
$output = substr($result, strlen("<body>"), -strlen("</body>"));

Demo on 3v4l

PHP preg_replace: Replace all anchor tags in text with their href value with Regex

Solution 1:

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