How to use preg_replace with url encoded $_GET?

Question

I have a an url which looks like this https://URL.DOMAIN/blog.php?id=43&q=echo%20%27test%27 .

When I use <?php echo $_GET['q']?> it displays echo 'test' which is what I want.

I am using this variable inside a preg_replace function which is basically made to apply a yellow background under matched strings:

preg_replace('/\b('.$_GET['q'].')\b/iu', '<span class="research-news-found">$1</span>', $news_content);

It works perfectly for "normal" strings like "apple" or whatever, but when there is a ' inside the search query it doesn't match anything.

Code example

$news_content = $news_display['news_description'];

if(isset($_GET['q'])){
   $news_content = preg_replace('/\b('.$_GET['q'].')\b/iu', '<span class="research-news-found">$1</span>', $news_content);
}

$news_display['news_description'] contains the text output from DB.

Answer 1

Just make the pattern greedy ? and remove the trailing word boundary \b since ' is not a word character and is a word boundary:

$news_content = preg_replace('/\b('.$_GET['q'].'?)/iu',
                             '<span class="research-news-found">$1</span>',
                             $news_content);

Demo

But if you are hoping that it will actually echo test , then no. You would need to restructure your question to state what you want to achieve, not how to get this replacement to work.