Creating pattern to php preg_match_all

Question

I'm using preg_match_all() and my problem is that I can't create the pattern that I want. Example of source text:

<td align='left'>
    <span style='font-size: 13px; font-family: Verdana;'><span>
</td>
<td>
    <a style='color: #ffff00' rel='gb_page_fs[]' title='Parodyk kitiems 8 seriją' href='/pasidalink-19577x10/'>
        <img src="/templates/filmai_black/images/ico_tool_share.gif" />
    </a>
</td>
<td>
    <small>LT titrai</small>
</td>
<td>
    <a rel='gb_page_center[528, 290]' title='Žiūrėti 8 seriją' href='http://www.filmai.in/watch.php?em=BuwgzpqtssiAGGcjeekz9PTI1NjQ0N2E~'>
        <img src="/templates/filmai_black/images/play_icon.png" width="20" onclick='set_watched_cookie_serial("19577x10", "done-tick-full-series")' />
    </a>
</td>

I am using the pattern:

<td><small>(.*)</small></td>
<td><a rel='gb_page_center[528, 290]' title='Žiūrėti (.*) seriją' href='(.*)'><img src=

I want to get the content in the (.*) location into an array.

Can someone please correct my pattern and explain it? I want to learn to use regular expressions.

You should never use regex against `html`, use `DOMDocument` instead. — Mihai Iorga, Sep 27 '12 at 09:41
Yes, inexperienced coders are floored by regex syntax if it comes to HTML extraction. There are [simpler options](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3577641/how-to-parse-and-process-html-with-php). — mario, Sep 27 '12 at 09:57

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 14 '13 at 09:53

"Don't use Regex to parse HTML" aside, here are a few uber simple steps to learning Regexp.

Download and install RegexBuddy
Run RegexBuddy
Start with something easy and then FLY! :)

the expression you are looking for is:

<small>(.*)</small>

It finds all characters found inbetween small tags and puts them into backreferences. Think of Backreference as an Array. The first to item found, is 0, next is 1 and so on.

// command:
preg_match_all('%<small>(.*)</small>%i', $subject, $result, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);

// $result[0]

Array
(
    [0] => <small>LT titrai</small>
)

Creating pattern to php preg_match_all

1 Answers1