Search link with regular expression

Question

I am new in regular expression.

I have this text:

$text =
'<ul style="list-style:none;">
  <li>
      <a href="files/docs/qwe.xls" target="_blank">Link1</a>
  </li>
  <li>
      <a href="files/docs/ere.xls" target="_blank">Link2</a>
  </li>
  <li>
      <a href="files/docs/123.xls" target="_blank">Link3</a>
  </li>
</ul>';

with regular expression I want to get this arrays:

$filePath[0] = "files/docs/qwe.xls";
$fileName[0] = "Link1";
$filePath[1] = "files/docs/ere.xls";
$fileName[1] = "Link2";
$filePath[2] = "files/docs/123.xls";
$fileName[2] = "Link3";

How can I do it?

Thanks.

Ideally one should not be parsing HTML with regular expressions, even the slightest changes in the text will tend to mess up your regexps. Please take a look at this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3577641/how-do-you-parse-and-process-html-xml-in-php — ffledgling, Oct 30 '13 at 10:45

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 30 '13 at 10:12

2

You need simple regular expression

check this code

 $match = array();
 preg_match_all('#<a href="(.*?)">(.*?)</a>#sm', $text, $match);
 print_r($match)

(.*?) - means everything non greedy

answered Oct 30 '13 at 10:12

Robert

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1

Fails if tags are written in uppercase ... add #ims instead of #sm for this at end of the expression. – TiMESPLiNTER Oct 30 '13 at 10:23
@TiMESPLiNTER did the op write that uppercase is needed? It's just about adding "i" to "#sm" :) – Robert Oct 31 '13 at 07:24
Yeah I know but you wrote in my answer that my code is not working with multiline and this was nod needed either bei the op an his example. So I thought I'll complete your answer too. – TiMESPLiNTER Oct 31 '13 at 07:36
his example isn't written in 1 line, is it? – Robert Oct 31 '13 at 13:06
It is not but my regex didn't need to match multi lines in the example above. It would only need to match multi lines if the ... part is on multiple lines. But it isn't. – TiMESPLiNTER Oct 31 '13 at 13:09

TiMESPLiNTER · Accepted Answer · 2013-10-30T10:17:29.913

0

Use

$res = array();
preg_match_all('/href="(.+?)".*?>(.+?)<\/a>/ims', $text, $res);
var_dump($res);

edited Oct 30 '13 at 10:17

answered Oct 30 '13 at 10:09

TiMESPLiNTER

5,741
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@Robert: Why to define $res first? – TiMESPLiNTER Oct 30 '13 at 10:14
Because it will give error of undefined array moreover it's good habbit to declare variables that you're going to use. Btw your code will fail with multiline – Robert Oct 30 '13 at 10:14
But $res gets defined by preg_match_all and it does not throws a php error at all, even if I enable E_ALL error_reporting(). Multiline was not a requirement. – TiMESPLiNTER Oct 30 '13 at 10:19
`$res` is not defined by preg_match_all! Check the manual. As param preg_match_all takes reference to object. Reference means that object needs to exists before it's passed to function. http://php.net/manual/en/function.preg-match-all.php – Robert Oct 31 '13 at 07:26
Okay, but then we have to fix the doc and its examples overthere at php.net don't we? – TiMESPLiNTER Oct 31 '13 at 07:32
I don't understand u declaration param for matches is `array &$matches` which means the reference to array. Reference rather refers to objects that exists. – Robert Oct 31 '13 at 13:07

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 30 '13 at 10:11

Use lookarounds, they are useful to check if there is something before or after the string you're looking for. Here is how it works:

/(?<=href=")[^"]*(?=")/

Here is what it means:

/ beginning
(?<=href=") preceded by href="
[^"]* any nomber of non-" characters
(?=") followed by "
/ end

Search link with regular expression

3 Answers3