PHP Cut text between substrings with regexp

Question

I need to extract from this html:

<div class="list-group">
    <a class="list-group-item active">
        <h4 class="list-group-item-heading">{EVENT_GROUP_TIME}</h4>
    </a>
    {EVENTS:}
    <a class="list-group-item">
        <h4 class="list-group-item-heading">{EVENT_NAME}</h4>
        <p class="list-group-item-text"><i>{EVENT_LECTURER}</i></p>
        <p class="list-group-item-text">{EVENT_TIME}</p>
        <p class="list-group-item-text">{EVENT_LOCATION}</p>
    </a>
    {ENDEVENTS}
</div>

Two substring: with {EVENTS:}...{ENDEVENTS} block and second is everything else. In other words: $group_header =

<div class="list-group">
    <a class="list-group-item active">
        <h4 class="list-group-item-heading">{EVENT_GROUP_TIME}</h4>
    </a>
</div>

and $group_body =

<a class="list-group-item">
    <h4 class="list-group-item-heading">{EVENT_NAME}</h4>
    <p class="list-group-item-text"><i>{EVENT_LECTURER}</i></p>
    <p class="list-group-item-text">{EVENT_TIME}</p>
    <p class="list-group-item-text">{EVENT_LOCATION}</p>
</a>

I tried to make it with substr but it seems to be too slow with big date. Can someone suggest how to make such operation with regexp in php?

Have you tried using something like: http://simplehtmldom.sourceforge.net/ instead of regex? — ghstcode, Dec 01 '13 at 10:33
No, i dont. The reason is that i need to parse just one "template" and using the whole lib is not what i want. But thing is cool. Added to bookmarks =) — ovnia, Dec 01 '13 at 10:37
As i said, i tried to do it with substr, strlen and strpos. Also tried some regexp matches like {EVENTS:}(.*?){ENDEVENTS} but it dont work @Nimrod007 — ovnia, Dec 01 '13 at 10:59
@user3017651 the expected output doesn't match the input you have, think about the closing `` — HamZa, Dec 01 '13 at 11:21
You use XML, which has all the functionality for XPath and XQuery based extractions of data. And then you ruin it by stupid curly braces? Don't forget to shot the bonehead who had that idea. — ceving, Dec 01 '13 at 12:12
This might help: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13824438/php-preg-replace-everything-in-between-specific-html-comment-tags/13824617#13824617 — Onimusha, Dec 01 '13 at 18:40

Naveed Hasan · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-01T18:30:28.940

1

The Regular Expression You Need is this:

/(.*)({EVENTS:}(.*){ENDEVENTS})(.*)/s

Here is the complete PHP Code to test it:

<?php
$regex = "/(.*)({EVENTS:}(.*){ENDEVENTS})(.*)/s";
$string = "
<div class=\"list-group\">
    <a class=\"list-group-item active\">
        <h4 class=\"list-group-item-heading\">{EVENT_GROUP_TIME}</h4>
    </a>
    {EVENTS:}
    <a class=\"list-group-item\">
        <h4 class=\"list-group-item-heading\">{EVENT_NAME}</h4>
        <p class=\"list-group-item-text\"><i>{EVENT_LECTURER}</i></p>
        <p class=\"list-group-item-text\">{EVENT_TIME}</p>
        <p class=\"list-group-item-text\">{EVENT_LOCATION}</p>
    </a>
    {ENDEVENTS}
</div>

";
preg_match($regex,$string,$matches);
print_r($matches);
?>

Reference for the "s" modifier:

http://php.net/manual/en/reference.pcre.pattern.modifiers.php

edited Dec 01 '13 at 18:30

answered Dec 01 '13 at 17:59

Naveed Hasan

641
7
19

How would you match the rest ? – HamZa Dec 01 '13 at 17:59
I edited my answer so that other parts are also matched. (Match 1) + (Match 3) is the rest, with the brackets. – Naveed Hasan Dec 01 '13 at 18:01
Use the `s` modifier to match newlines with `.`. You'll end up with something like `(.*){EVENTS:}.*?{ENDEVENTS}(.*)` – HamZa Dec 01 '13 at 18:05
I am checking right now, it doesnt seem to work, wait.. Only the {EVENTS:} thing is getting matched. – Naveed Hasan Dec 01 '13 at 18:07
How are you printing the results ? Can you show me in a pastebin ? – HamZa Dec 01 '13 at 18:14
let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/42282/discussion-between-naveed-hasan-and-hamza) – Naveed Hasan Dec 01 '13 at 18:16

PHP Cut text between substrings with regexp

1 Answers1