$re = '/\brecord {[^{}]*my_id_1[^{}]*}/m';
$str = 'record {
record {
id my_id_1
my_name_1
}
record {
id my_id_2
my_name_2
}
record {
id my_id_3
my_name_3
}
}';
preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0);
// Print the entire match result
var_dump($matches);
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php