Search html string using regular expression and store in array in PHP

Question

I need to search string which can be something like this:

<div class="icon_star">&nbsp;</div>

or

<div class="icon_star"></div>

or

<div class="icon_star"> </div>

I need to search above strings in HTML which could be something like this:

<h1 class="redword" tag="h1">
   <span class="BASE">good</span>
</h1>
<span class="headword-definition">&#160;-&#160;definition</span>
</span>
<div class="icon_star"></div>
<!-- End of DIV icon_star-->

<div class="icon_star"></div>
<!-- End of DIV icon_star-->

<div class="icon_star"></div>
<!-- End of DIV icon_star-->

</div><!-- End of DIV -->

<div class="headbar">
   <div id="helplinks-box" class="responsive_hide_on_smartphone">

String which we are trying to search and store in array can be multiple times

I have tried using the following regex:

preg_match_all ('/<div(\s)+class="icon_star">(.*?)<\/div>/i', $html1, $result_array1);

This above regex does not work when HTML to be searched is

<div id="headword">
    <div id="headwordright">
        <div style="display: none;" id="showmore"><a class="button" onmousedown="foldingSet(false)"><span class="label">Show more</span></a>
        </div><!-- End of DIV -->
        <div id="showless"><a class="button" onmousedown="foldingSet(true)"><span class="label">Show less</span></a>
        </div><!-- End of DIV -->
    </div><!-- End of DIV -->
    <span class="BASE-FORM">
        <h1 tag="h1" class="redword"><span class="BASE">scenario</span></h1>
        <span class="headword-definition">&nbsp;-&nbsp;definition</span>
    </span>
    <div class="icon_star">&nbsp;</div><!-- End of DIV icon_star-->
</div>

Have you tried to use a regex already? If so, what is it (perhaps folks can help adjust it if you post it) if not - why haven't you tried anything on your own? — Fluffeh, May 10 '14 at 10:34
Tip: Don't. Use a native PHP class. Use something like DOMDocument or simplexml. — Farkie, May 10 '14 at 10:35
@Fluffeh: yes, its something like this:: `preg_match_all ('/
(.*?)<\/div>/i', $html1, $result_array1);` — D555, May 10 '14 at 10:35
@D555 I have added your regex to the question. Hope you don't mind the edit. Saves folks trawling the comments (or more likely not trawling the comments). — Fluffeh, May 10 '14 at 10:37
@bluskies such as this:: `
Show more
Show less
scenario
- definition

` — D555, May 10 '14 at 11:03
@bluskies as above html contains icon-star div only once it should return array count as 1 but it returns 3 instead of 1. — D555, May 10 '14 at 11:04
Aha, now I see that there was some HTML that wasn't displaying correctly in the question. Fixed it. — tar, May 10 '14 at 11:09
@D555 are you relying on array count? then you shouldn't. You should look in the first index of the result array — Ejaz, May 10 '14 at 11:14
@Ejay Thanks Ejay, yes I was looking at array count and thats why I was confused, thanks for letting me know. — D555, May 10 '14 at 11:18

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:57

Update

It seems that you are reading your regexp results wrong way. Executing

preg_match_all('/<div(\s)+class="icon_star">.*?<\/div>/i', $html, $result_array1);

for($x = 0; $x < count($result_array1); $x++)
    $result_array1[$x] = array_map('htmlentities', $result_array1[$x]);

echo '<pre>' . print_r($result_array1, 1);

prints out

   Array
   (
       [0] => Array
       (
           [0] => <div class="icon_star">&nbsp;</div>
       )

       [1] => Array
       (
           [0] =>  
       )

   )

so you should be checking count of $result_array1[0] instead of $result_array1

side note

instead of parsing HTML with regex, you could use DOMDocument class built into PHP, if you can.
Using following code extracts three div's.

Be aware that you need to have valid HTML for this method to work.

  //your HTML with tag added to make it valid
  $html = '<div>
     <h1 class="redword" tag="h1">
        <span class="BASE">good</span>
     </h1>
     <span class="headword-definition"><span>&#160;-&#160;definition</span></span>
     <div class="icon_star"></div>
     <div class="icon_star"></div>
     <div class="icon_star"></div>
  </div>
  <div class="headbar">
     <div id="helplinks-box" class="responsive_hide_on_smartphone">
     </div>
  </div>';

  $dom = new DOMDocument();
  @$dom->loadHTML($html);
  $x = new DOMXPath($dom);

  //this xpath query looks for all nodes that have "class" attribute value equal to "icon_star"
  $nodes = $x->query("//*[contains(@class, 'icon_star')]");

  $res = '';
  foreach($nodes as $node) {
     /**
      * @var $node DOMElement
      */
     $res .= $dom->saveHTML($node);
  }

  echo htmlentities($res);

You could read following useful questions on stackoverflow
How do you parse and process HTML/XML in PHP?
Getting DOM elements by classname

Thanks Ejay but due to some reason I have been asked to do it strictly using regex but surely your answer will be useful to some other guy searching for help — D555, May 10 '14 at 11:01

Search html string using regular expression and store in array in PHP

scenario

1 Answers1