$re = '/((<ns3:[a-z,0-9]+>)\{(fn:data(\(\$[a-z,0-9./,:]+\)))\}</ns3:[a-z,0-9]+>)/';
$str = '{
"name": "Apostol",
"steam": 76561198017242084
},';
$subst = "{if($3)then$1else if($4)then$2else()}";
$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str, 1);
echo "The result of the substitution is ".$result;
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