How to replace text over multiple lines using preg_replace

Question

Hi have the following content within an html page that stretches multiple lines

<div class="c-fc c-bc" id="content">
                <span class="content-heading c-hc">Heading 1 </span><br />
                The Home Page must provide a introduction to the services provided.<br />
                <br />
                <span class="c-sc">Sub Heading</span><br />
                The Home Page must provide a introduction to the services provided.<br />
                <br />
                <span class="c-sc">Sub Heading</span><br /> 
                The Home Page must provide a introduction to the services provided.<br />
            </div>

I need to replace everthing between <div class="c-fc c-bc" id="content"> and </div> with custom text

I use the following code to accomplish this but it does not want to work if it's multiple lines, but works if evertinh is in one line

$body = file_get_contents('../../templates/'.$val['url']);

$body = preg_replace('/<div class=\"c\-fc c\-bc\" id=\"content\">(.*)<\/div>/','<div class="c-fc c-bc" id="content">abc</div>',$body);

Am I missing something?

Answer 1

If this weren't HTML, I'd tell you to use the DOTALL modifier to change the meaning of . from 'match everything except new line' to 'match everything':

preg_replace('/(.*)<\/div>/s','abc',$body);

But this is HTML, so use an HTML parser instead.

Answer 2

it is the "s" flag, it enables . to capture newlines

Answer 3

you can also use [\s\S] instead of . combined with the DOTALL flag s for matching everyting because [\s\S] means exactly the same: match everything; \s matches all space-characters (including newline) and \S machtes everything that is not a space-character (i.e. everything else). in some cases/implementations of regular expressions, this works better than enabling DOTALL

caution: .* with the flag for DOTALL as well as [\s\S] are both "hungry" and won't stop reading the string. if you want them to stop at a certain position, (e.g. the first </div>), use the non-greedy operator ? behind your quantifier, e.g. .*?