CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpregex
Keiran Lovett
Keiran Lovett

Reputation: 604

preg_match problem

I am working on a schedule system that collects information from a RSS feed. However, when I try to strip the necessary segment from the RSS preg_match returns it as invalid.

//Finds the day by stripping data from the myDragonnet RSS feed.
function schedule($given_date) {
    $url = "http://mydragonnet.hkis.edu.hk/schedule/day_schedule_rss.php?schedule_id=1";
    $rss = simplexml_load_file($url);
    $date = date("~jS M Y~", strtotime($given_date)); 
    if($rss) {
        foreach($rss->channel->item as $item) {
            foreach ($item->title as $story) {
                if (strpos($date, $story) !== false) {
                    preg_match("/Day (\d+)/", $story, $m);
                    break; // stop searching
                }   
            } 
        }
    }
    return $m[1];
}

The function : <?php echo schedule('01/24/2010'); ?>

This is the error I'm getting - 

Warning: preg_match() [function.preg-match]: Unknown modifier '/' in ***/class.schedule.php on line 31

Upvotes: 1

Views: 433

Answers (3)

Broadhead
Broadhead

Reputation: 66

try this:

// Finds the day by stripping data from the myDragonnet RSS feed.
function schedule($given_date) {
    $url = "http://mydragonnet.hkis.edu.hk/schedule/day_schedule_rss.php?schedule_id=1";
    $rss = simplexml_load_file($url);
    $date = date("jS M Y", strtotime($given_date)); 
    $found = false;

    if($rss) {
        foreach($rss->channel->item as $item) {
            foreach ($item->title as $story) {
                if (strpos($story, $date) !== false) {
                    if (preg_match('/Day (\d+)/i', $story, $m)) {
                        $found = true;
                        break; // stop searching
                    }
                }   
            }

            if ($found)
            {
                break;
            } 
        }
    }
    return $m[1];
}

Upvotes: 1

codaddict
codaddict

Reputation: 454990

The reason for this error is that preg_match expects its first argument (the pattern) to be enclosed in pair of delimiters say /the pattern/

So change:

preg_match($date, $story)

to

preg_match('!'.preg_quote($date).'!', $story)

Also it looks like you are using preg_match to just search for a string in another string. It is better to use a string searching function like strpos or strstr for such a thing:

if (strpos($date, $story) === false) 
   continue;

You can rewrite your foreach loop as

foreach ($item->title as $story) {
        if (strpos($date, $story) !== false) {
            echo $story;             
            break; // stop searching
        }   
}

Upvotes: 2

Bailey Parker
Bailey Parker

Reputation: 15905

Why not use strstr() instead of preg_match. It's much faster! (Documentation)

Upvotes: 1

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