How to parse HTML in PHP?

Question

I know we can use PHP DOM to parse HTML using PHP. I found a lot of questions here on Stack Overflow too. But I have a specific requirement. I have an HTML content like below

<p class="Heading1-P">
    <span class="Heading1-H">Chapter 1</span>
</p>
<p class="Normal-P">
    <span class="Normal-H">This is chapter 1</span>
</p>
<p class="Heading1-P">
    <span class="Heading1-H">Chapter 2</span>
</p>
<p class="Normal-P">
    <span class="Normal-H">This is chapter 2</span>
</p>
<p class="Heading1-P">
    <span class="Heading1-H">Chapter 3</span>
</p>
<p class="Normal-P">
    <span class="Normal-H">This is chapter 3</span>
</p>

I want to parse the above HTML and save the content into two different arrays like:

$heading and $content

$heading = array('Chapter 1','Chapter 2','Chapter 3');
$content = array('This is chapter 1','This is chapter 2','This is chapter 3');

I can achieve this simply using jQuery. But I am not sure, if that's the right way. It would be great if someone can point me to the right direction. Thanks in advance.

@Susheel: HTML content will be much bigger as it is the output after parsing `docx` files — laradev, Aug 21 '13 at 05:00
You could use regular expressions if you don't like to go for PHP DOM. — Lorenz Meyer, Aug 21 '13 at 05:00
@LorenzMeyer [do not use regular expressions to parse html](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags) — castis, Aug 21 '13 at 05:06
@blessed, I have added solution at: http://stackoverflow.com/a/18349663/749232 — saji89, Aug 21 '13 at 06:21

saji89 · Answer 1 · 2013-08-21T07:38:18.067

I have used domdocument and domxpath to get the solution, you can find it at:

<?php
$dom = new DomDocument();
$test='<p class="Heading1-P">
    <span class="Heading1-H">Chapter 1</span>
</p>
<p class="Normal-P">
    <span class="Normal-H">This is chapter 1</span>
</p>
<p class="Heading1-P">
    <span class="Heading1-H">Chapter 2</span>
</p>
<p class="Normal-P">
    <span class="Normal-H">This is chapter 2</span>
</p>
<p class="Heading1-P">
    <span class="Heading1-H">Chapter 3</span>
</p>
<p class="Normal-P">
    <span class="Normal-H">This is chapter 3</span>
</p>';

$dom->loadHTML($test);
$xpath = new DOMXpath($dom);
    $heading=parseToArray($xpath,'Heading1-H');
    $content=parseToArray($xpath,'Normal-H');

var_dump($heading);
echo "<br/>";
var_dump($content);
echo "<br/>";

function parseToArray($xpath,$class)
{
    $xpathquery="//span[@class='".$class."']";
    $elements = $xpath->query($xpathquery);

    if (!is_null($elements)) {  
        $resultarray=array();
        foreach ($elements as $element) {
            $nodes = $element->childNodes;
            foreach ($nodes as $node) {
              $resultarray[] = $node->nodeValue;
            }
        }
        return $resultarray;
    }
}

Live result: http://saji89.codepad.org/2TyOAibZ

I've found this link to be very useful to learn the XPATH.query syntax: https://www.w3schools.com/xml/xpath_syntax.asp — Nigini, Jul 15 '20 at 20:45

score 20 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 21 '18 at 14:33

20

Try to look at PHP Simple HTML DOM Parser

It has brilliant syntax similar to jQuery so you can easily select any element you want by ID or class

// include/require the simple html dom parser file

$html_string = '
    <p class="Heading1-P">
        <span class="Heading1-H">Chapter 1</span>
    </p>
    <p class="Normal-P">
        <span class="Normal-H">This is chapter 1</span>
    </p>
    <p class="Heading1-P">
        <span class="Heading1-H">Chapter 2</span>
    </p>
    <p class="Normal-P">
        <span class="Normal-H">This is chapter 2</span>
    </p>
    <p class="Heading1-P">
        <span class="Heading1-H">Chapter 3</span>
    </p>
    <p class="Normal-P">
        <span class="Normal-H">This is chapter 3</span>
    </p>';
$html = str_get_html($html_string);
foreach($html->find('span') as $element) {
    if ($element->class === 'Heading1-H') {
        $heading[] = $element->innertext;
    }else if($element->class === 'Normal-H') {
        $content[] = $element->innertext;
    }
}

edited Nov 21 '18 at 14:33

iniravpatel

1,553
16
24

answered Aug 21 '13 at 04:58

Paul Denisevich

2,329
14
19

3

!!NOTICE!! not using "->innertext" leads to memory leaks. – M at Jul 14 '19 at 21:19
2

This is a much easier option and produces more readable code compared to using DomDocument. – Stephen G Feb 23 '20 at 14:53
Is there an option to install that with composer? – luckydonald Jun 10 '20 at 17:09
1

Composer install [is now possible](https://sourceforge.net/p/simplehtmldom/news/2019/10/composer-package/): `composer require simplehtmldom/simlehtmldom dev-master` and `use simplehtmldom\HtmlWeb;` – luckydonald Jun 10 '20 at 17:13
@luckydonald there is a typo in your comment. missing the "p" in the second "simple" in the composer require command – Philip Dec 22 '22 at 21:55
@Philip yeah, that typo is in the [linked official source](https://sourceforge.net/p/simplehtmldom/news/2019/10/composer-package/). The corrected version would then be like this: `composer require simplehtmldom/simplehtmldom dev-master` and `use simplehtmldom\HtmlWeb;` – luckydonald Jan 04 '23 at 15:01

score 8 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 25 '20 at 06:11

Here's an alternative way to parse the html using DiDOM which offers significantly better performance in terms of speed and memory footprint.

composer require imangazaliev/didom

<?php

use DiDom\Document;

require_once('vendor/autoload.php');

$html = <<<HTML
<p class="Heading1-P">
    <span class="Heading1-H">Chapter 1</span>
</p>
<p class="Normal-P">
    <span class="Normal-H">This is chapter 1</span>
</p>
<p class="Heading1-P">
    <span class="Heading1-H">Chapter 2</span>
</p>
<p class="Normal-P">
    <span class="Normal-H">This is chapter 2</span>
</p>
<p class="Heading1-P">
    <span class="Heading1-H">Chapter 3</span>
</p>
<p class="Normal-P">
    <span class="Normal-H">This is chapter 3</span>
</p>
HTML;

$document = new Document($html);

// find chapter headings
$elements = $document->find('.Heading1-H');

$headings = [];

foreach ($elements as $element) {
    $headings[] = $element->text();
}

// find chapter texts
$elements = $document->find('.Normal-H');

$chapters = [];

foreach ($elements as $element) {
    $chapters[] = $element->text();
}

echo("Headings\n");

foreach ($headings as $heading) {
    echo("- {$heading}\n");
}

echo("Chapter texts\n");

foreach ($chapters as $chapter) {
    echo("- {$chapter}\n");
}

Love it when you find an old question on SO with a really good modern answer. That DOM parser is excellent, cheers. — McNab, Apr 27 '22 at 09:16

Greeso · Answer 4 · 2018-07-16T19:03:14.537

5

One option for you is to use DOMDocument and DOMXPath. They do require a bit of a curve to learn, but once you do, you will be pretty happy with what you can achieve.

Read the following in php.net

http://php.net/manual/en/class.domdocument.php

http://php.net/manual/en/class.domxpath.php

Hope this helps.

edited Jul 16 '18 at 19:03

answered Aug 21 '13 at 05:00

Greeso

7,544
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77

1

This has problem with broken html – M at Jul 14 '19 at 20:56
2

dont. use. phps. dom. This answer is old. PHPs Dom doesn't get along with 2020+ HTML – Alexander May 27 '20 at 10:49

score -12 · Answer 5 · edited Mar 05 '14 at 08:13

-12

// Create DOM from URL or file

$html = file_get_html('http://www.google.com/');

// Find all images

foreach($html->find('img') as $element) 
   echo $element->src . '<br>';

// Find all links

foreach($html->find('a') as $element) 
   echo $element->href . '<br>';

edited Mar 05 '14 at 08:13

Chen-Tsu Lin

22,876
16
53
63

answered Mar 05 '14 at 07:55

jfraber

607
1
5
6

file_get_html ?? Is that a PHP function ? – everydayapps Jan 15 '16 at 11:29
4

file_get_content is right. he has copy past from php simple dom website – Mohammad Alipour Sep 19 '16 at 10:57

How to parse HTML in PHP?

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