Get ul li a string values and store them in a variable or array php

Question

Im trying to store the string value's of a list item on my website into a variable/array in PHP to do some conditional checks/statements with them. Am having a bit off difficulty getting the list item's string value using PHP, can anybody help?

This is the markup.

<div class="coursesListed">
<ul>
<li><a href="#"><h3>Item one</h3></a></li>
<li><a href="#"><h3>item two</h3></a></li>
<li><a href="#"><h3>Item three</h3></a></li>            
</ul>
</div>

What i want ideally is either a variable or array that holds the values "Item one", "Item two", "Item three".

Well for a start, PHP works on a `name` attribute. So you might want to give your elements one of those :) — christopher, Jul 14 '13 at 09:33
Are you trying to parse the HTML and retrieve the values in all the
tags? — Amal Murali, Jul 14 '13 at 09:34
Okay I can give them a name. Amal, you will have to excuse my ignorance, im fairly new to programming in PHP. Yes im trying to retrive the values in the H3 tags, but only the H3 tags in the class coursesListed. Does that make sense? — RoseCoder, Jul 14 '13 at 09:38
@RoseCoder: Please make yourself comfortable about which kind of questions are valid to be asked. For example, in that general form, you should first look for existing material like [How do you parse and process HTML/XML in PHP?](http://stackoverflow.com/q/3577641/367456) and then let us know into which problems you ran into with that (if even any problem). Because each other user with a different website to parse could ask a new question then which does not turn out well. Thanks for taking care! — hakre, Jul 14 '13 at 12:16

Manoj Yadav · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-14T09:45:10.647

5

Try this

$html = '<div class="coursesListed">
<ul>
<li><a href="#"><h3>Item one</h3></a></li>
<li><a href="#"><h3>item two</h3></a></li>
<li><a href="#"><h3>Item three</h3></a></li>            
</ul>
</div>';

$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc->loadHTML($html);
$liList = $doc->getElementsByTagName('li');
$liValues = array();
foreach ($liList as $li) {
    $liValues[] = $li->nodeValue;
}

var_dump($liValues);

edited Jul 14 '13 at 09:45

answered Jul 14 '13 at 09:39

Manoj Yadav

6,560
1
23
21

Its working fine for me, online output link http://codepad.org/VyLj8cU0 – Manoj Yadav Jul 14 '13 at 09:49
This works great, is there anyway of dynamically retrieving whats stored int he $html variable without declaring it like that? Many thanks – RoseCoder Jul 14 '13 at 10:41
Yes pass the dynamic string to `loadHTML` like `$doc->loadHTML($dynamic_string);` – Manoj Yadav Jul 14 '13 at 10:46
@ManojYadav one more thing, what if i also want to get the `href` attribute of every `
` tag? Please help.

Ali

Mar 26 '14 at 06:47

1

@Ali use `DOMElement::getAttribute function` to get a attribute value. http://in3.php.net/manual/en/domelement.getattribute.php and I think you mean how to get `href` of `a` tag not `li` tag – Manoj Yadav Mar 26 '14 at 08:39

Yes Manoj, i meant to say that i have a `ul` of almost 65 `li` and every `li` has a link upon it. So what i want to do is to get only first 5 `li` in an array (along with the associated link) and print them along with the `href` associated with their respective `li`. Hope you get it :) – Ali Mar 27 '14 at 05:24

To get `href` of `a` in `li` try this `$li->getElementsByTagName('a')->item(0)->getAttribute('href')` or if `href` in `li` then try this `$li->getAttribute('href')` – Manoj Yadav Mar 27 '14 at 11:16

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 14 '13 at 09:37

2

You will need to parse the HTML code get the text out. DOM parser can be used for this purpose.

   $DOM = new DOMDocument;
   $DOM->loadHTML($str); // $str is your HTML code as a string

   //get all H3 
   $items = $DOM->getElementsByTagName('h3');

answered Jul 14 '13 at 09:37

Satish Gadhave

2,880
3
20
27

zpr · Answer 3 · 2013-07-14T10:26:32.717

It might be easier to parse it in Javascript (perhaps using jQuery), and then send it to your PHP with some AJAX.

// Javascript/jQuery
var array = [];
$("h3").each(function() {
    array.push($(this).html());
});

var message = JSON.stringify(array);
$.post('test.php', {data: message}, function(data) {
    document.write(data); // "success"
}

Then in PHP:

<?php

$data = $_POST['data'];

// convert json into array
$array = json_decode($data);

// do stuff with your data
// then send back whatever you need

echo "success";

?>

Get ul li a string values and store them in a variable or array php

tags?

3 Answers3

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