How can i replace a line of php code with preg_replace

Question

I have the following line of php code in some of my pages

<?php include("contactform.php"); ?>

I have a crude CMS where I exchange lines of code for user manageable tags, my hope is to convert this line of code into [contact] so that people can add or remove it at their leisure. This is how far i've got...

ie $file = preg_replace('#<?php include("contactform.php"); ?>#i', "[contact]", $file);

$file looks something like this...

<h1 class="title">Title</h1>
<p>Text</p>
<?php include("contactform.php"); ?>

So the PHP code has not been stripped out by the server as we are editing the file and not viewing it.


I'm pretty new to PHP so I guess i'm being really stupid, is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

If you want to do 1:1 string replacements, then use the simpler str_replace

$file = str_replace('<?php include("contactform.php"); ?>', "[contact]", $file);

With a preg_replace you need to escape meta characters like ? and ( with backslashes:

$file = preg_replace('#<\?php include\("contactform.php"\); \?>#i', "[contact]", $file);

And using a regex would only provide any advantage if you want to make it more resilient of whitespace for example. Use \\s+ instead of literal spaces in that case.