CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpregex
user580175
user580175

Reputation:

Looking for Regular Expressions in PHP

I'm using preg_match function in PHP in order to extract some values from a RSS Feed. Inside this feed content there is something like this:

<li><strong>Something:</strong> A text with non alphanumeric characters (more text), more text with non alphanumeric characters (more text)</li>

I need to get those "A text with non alphanumeric characters" and "more text with non alphanumeric characters" to save them in a database. I don't know if using regular expressions is the best way to do it.

Thank you so much.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 83

Answers (3)

Geert
Geert

Reputation: 1824

$str = '<li><strong>Something:</strong> A text with non alphanumeric characters (more text), more text with non alphanumeric characters (more text)</li>';
$str = preg_replace('~^.*?</strong>~', '', $str); // Remove leading markup
$str = preg_replace('~</li>$~', '', $str); // Remove trailing markup
$str = preg_replace('~\([^)]++\)~', '', $str); // Remove text within parentheses
$str = trim($str); // Clean up whitespace
$arr = preg_split('~\s*,\s*~', $str); // Split on the comma

Upvotes: 0

buckley
buckley

Reputation: 14071

Given that the structure is always the same you can use this regex

</strong>([^,]*),([^<]*)</li>

group 1 will have the first fragment, group 2 the other

Once you start parsing html/xml with regexes it becomes quickly apparent that a full blown parser is better suited. For small or throwaway solution you a regex can be useful.

Upvotes: 0

Jay
Jay

Reputation: 3305

If you want to use regex (i.e. quick and dirty, not really too maintainable), this will give you the text:

$input = '<li><strong>Something:</strong> A text with non alphanumeric characters (more text), more text with non alphanumeric characters (more text)</li>';

// Match between tags
preg_match("#</strong>(.*?)</li>#", $input, $matches);
// Remove the text inside brackets
echo trim(preg_replace("#\s*\(.*?\)\s*#", '', $matches[1]));

Though, nested brackets may fail.

Upvotes: 1

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