$re = '/state:([\w\s]+)\s/';
$str = 'addcard "My card title" assigned: @username @username2 state: ready to
deploy due: Next Wednesday project: tooling #tag1 #tag2 #tag3
addcard "My card title" state:ready to deploy assigned: @username
@username2 due: Next Wednesday project: tooling #tag1 #tag2 #tag3
addcard "My card title" #tag1 #tag2 #tag3 state: ready to deploy
assigned: @username @username2 due: Next Wednesday project: tooling ';
preg_match_all($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