Preg split table all tds

Question

I want to get all occurrences of tds in a string. At the moment im using $tds = preg_split( '#(?=<td>)#', $toDisplayNotes );

but this does not get all the tds. is it possible to produce an array that looks like this:

array {
  [0] => "<td>hello</td>"
  [1] => "<td align="right">world</td>"
  [2] => "<td>another td</td>"
}

[Don't parse HTML with regex](http://stackoverflow.com/q/1732348/247702) — user247702, Sep 09 '13 at 11:13
@Stijn, i don't really have a choice, unless there is a better way? — rob, Sep 09 '13 at 11:16
From the top answer on that question: Have you tried using an XML parser instead? — user247702, Sep 09 '13 at 11:16
@rob: [`DOMDocument`](http://www.php.net/DOMDocument)... there is a better way, so you have a choice! — Elias Van Ootegem, Sep 09 '13 at 11:19
Or look at [this question an it's answer](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15822908/php-simple-html-dom-get-text-inside-td-tag) using "simple html dom". — Rik, Sep 09 '13 at 11:19
thanks guys, ill try and work out a solution based on your comments — rob, Sep 09 '13 at 11:22
@rob: Do look into the suggestions and links in my answer, as it might help you on your way — Elias Van Ootegem, Sep 09 '13 at 11:32

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:25

Using the DOMDocument class, you can easily get all cells like so:

$dom = new DOMDocument;
$dom->loadHTML($htmlString);
$cells = $dom->getElementsByTagName('td');
$contents = array();
foreach($cells as $cell)
{
    $contents[] = $cell->nodeValue;
}
var_dump($contents);

The $cells var is a DOMNodeList, so it has some methods that you might be able to use. The $cell variable will be assigned a particular instance of DOMNode on each iteration, which has all sorts of methods/properties that could be useful for your use-case, too (like getAttribute)
Looking at your question, though, you'll be wanting the outer html (including the tags) in your array. Now that's easy:"

$markup = array();
foreach($cells as $cell)
{
    $markup[] = $dom->saveXML($cell);
}

Side-note:
Perhaps a for loop will be more performant than foreach. I haven't tested/compared the two, but you could try if you see a difference the approach above and this one:

$markup = array();
for($i=0, $j = $cells->length;$i<$j;$i++)
{
    $markup[] = $dom->saveXML($cells->item($i));
}

The reason why I'm using saveXML and not saveHTML is simple: saveHTML will generate a valid DOM (including opening <html> tags and what have you). Not what you want. That's why saveXML is, in this case, the better choice.
A slightly related question of mine here

@rob: `$cell->value` should have been `$cell->nodeValue` (as you can see on the man page of the `DOMNode` class)... corrected my mistake. That and the warnings you included in your comment just tell me that you're not passing the right variables/types to the methods. I'm just using example vars, you might want to check what it is you're passing to `loadHTML`, for example — Elias Van Ootegem, Sep 09 '13 at 11:36

Preg split table all tds

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