CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phphtmlregexpreg-match-all
James
James

Reputation: 1956

preg_match_all for <li> elements

I'm trying to return the count of a list. The list looks like:

<div id="list">
    <ul>
        <li class="some classes">1</li>
        <li>2</li>
        <li>3</li>
        <li>4</li>
    </ul>
</div>

I just can't figure out how to get a count of the li tags. I don't care about the contents, just the count. This is what I have:

preg_match_all('!<div id="list">.*?<li.*?>.*?</li>.*?</ul>!', $content, $matches);

Ugly I know, and I only receive one match when I count($matches[0]);

Can anyone point out what I'm doing wrong and/ or why?

Thanks

EDIT: I know parsing HTML with regex is bad, but I have little choice in the matter right now.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 4282

Answers (2)

Dave Walker
Dave Walker

Reputation: 122

Try this, it should work in almost all cases:

<?php
$t='<div id="list">
    <ul>
        <li class="some classes">1</li>
        <li>2</li>
        <li>3</li>
        <li>4</li>
    </ul>
</div>';

$list_array=explode("</li>",$t);
echo "total in list = ".count($list_array);
?>

Upvotes: 1

Jerry
Jerry

Reputation: 71548

<div id="list">.*?<li.*?>.*?</li>.*?</ul>
                                 ^^^

The part I'm pointing out is consuming all the characters until </ul> (even the <li> parts). After consuming them, there no more to match and it ends here, giving only one match.

Upvotes: 4

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