How can I get all HTML elements from an HTML snippet using regular expressions?

Question

Is there a trick to getting all HTML elements using regular expressions? Take this snippet of HTML, for instance:

<div>
<p>test
<span>blub</span></p>
</div>

in correct order Like:

array(
0=>'<div>
<p>test
<span>blub</span></p>
</div>',

1=>'<p>test
<span>blub</span></p>'

2=>'<span>blub</span>'
)

I thought of something with

 (<([A-z]+)[^>]*>.*?</\2>)

No. [You cannot parse HTML with regex!](http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/1048572) — Bergi, Dec 19 '12 at 23:35
How about using an HTML parser? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags/1732454#1732454 — Hugo Dozois, Dec 19 '12 at 23:35
[The pony, he comes...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags) — Andrew Whitaker, Dec 19 '12 at 23:35

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:56

1

You can't really parse HTML with regular expressions. Use PHP or some other language to parse your HTML.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:56

Community

answered Dec 19 '12 at 23:36

AntonNiklasson

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 19 '12 at 23:39

0

Quick and dirty

<[^>]+>

Don't expect this to work when you have string with '>' inside them.

answered Dec 19 '12 at 23:39

Derek Schrock

2 Answers2