extract string from http document with matcher/pattern

Question

Here is a part of my document:

<td align="right" valign="top"><b>Име:</b></td> <td align="left" valign="top">Павлин Евгениев Тишев</td>
<td rowspan="7" align="center" valign="top">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
<td align="right" valign="top"><b>Състояние:</b></td>
<td align="left" valign="top">Редовен</td>

I want to extract the String between <td align="left" valign="top"> and </td> from all occurrences one by one because the values are ordered by type.

I am using this code (in is the whole input String part of which is shown above)

Pattern p = Pattern.compile("<td align=\"left\" valign=\"top\">(.*?)</td>");
        Matcher m = p.matcher(in);

        if (m.matches()) {
            student.setName(m.group(1));
            student.setState(m.group(2));
        }

but it does not even enter the if

Answer 1

You should use this:

while (m.find()) {
            student.setName(m.group(1));
            student.setState(m.group(2));
        }

Read this for understanding exactly why should you use find() and not matches().