CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phphtmlregexhtml-parsingtext-extraction
user198729
user198729

Reputation: 63626

Extract a <div> element with a specified class and it's contents from an HTML document

<div class="begin">...</div>

How to match the html inside(including) <div class="begin"> in PHP?

I need a regex solution that can handle nested case.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1726

Answers (5)

Gordon
Gordon

Reputation: 316969

Here is your Regex:

preg_match('/<div class=\"begin\">.*<\/div>/simU', $string, $matches);

But:

  • RegEx do not know what XML/HTML elements are. To them, HTML is just a string. This is why the others are right. Regex are not for parsing a DOM. They are used to find string patterns.
  • I have provided the Regex because you do not intend to parse an entire HTML page, but just grab one defined piece of text from it, in which case a Regex is fine to use.
  • If there is a nested DIV inside the DIV, the Regex will not work as expected. If this is the case, do not use Regex. Use one of the other solutions, because then you need DOM parsing, not string matching.
  • For finding strings with a more or less clearly defined start and end, consider using regular string functions instead, as they are often quicker.

Upvotes: 2

slebetman
slebetman

Reputation: 113866

Use DOM and DOMXPath instead of regex, you'll thank me for it:

// something useful:
function dumpDomNode ($node) {
    $temp = new DOMDocument();
    $temp->appendChild($node,true);
    return $temp->saveHTML();
}

$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadHTML($html_string);

$xpath-> new DOMXpath($dom);

$elements = $xpath->query("*/div/[@class='begin']");

foreach ($elements as $el) {
    echo dumpDomNode($el); // <-- or do something more useful with it
}

Trying this with regex will lead you down the path to insanity...

Upvotes: 11

ghostdog74
ghostdog74

Reputation: 342313

here's one way using string methods

$str= <<<A
blah
<div class="begin">
blah blah
blah
blah blah </div>
blah
A;

$s = explode("</div>",$str);
foreach($s as $k=>$v){
    $m=strpos($v,'<div class="begin">');
    if($m !==FALSE){
        echo substr("$v" ,$m);
    }
}

output

$ php test.php
<div class="begin">
blah blah
blah
blah blah

Upvotes: 0

karim79
karim79

Reputation: 342635

// Create DOM from URL
$html = file_get_html('http://example.org/');

echo $html->find('div.begin', 0)->outertext;

http://simplehtmldom.sourceforge.net/manual.htm

Upvotes: 1

Emil Vikstr&#246;m
Emil Vikstr&#246;m

Reputation: 91902

This sums it up pretty good.

In short, don't use regular expressions to parse HTML. Instead, look at the DOM classes and especially DOMDocument::loadHTML

Upvotes: 2

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