How do I extract HTML content using Regex in PHP

Question

I know, i know... regex is not the best way to extract HTML text. But I need to extract article text from a lot of pages, I can store regexes in the database for each website. I'm not sure how XML parsers would work with multiple websites. You'd need a separate function for each website.

In any case, I don't know much about regexes, so bear with me.

I've got an HTML page in a format similar to this

<html>
<head>...</head>
<body>
    <div class=nav>...</div><p id="someshit" />
    <div class=body>....</div>
    <div class=footer>...</div>
</body>

I need to extract the contents of the body class container.

I tried this.

$pattern = "/<div class=\"body\">\(.*?\)<\/div>/sui"
$text = $htmlPageAsIs;
if (preg_match($pattern, $text, $matches))
    echo "MATCHED!";
else
    echo "Sorry gambooka, but your text is in another castle.";

What am I doing wrong? My text ends up in another castle.

*EDIT: ooohh... never mind, I found readability's code

Obviously, you haven't read SO's most upvoted answer, yet: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags/1732454#1732454 . If you don't know much about regexes *and* about XML parsers, why start with regexes and not with the more useful approach of HTML parsing? — Boldewyn, May 12 '10 at 12:09
@Boldewyn, I did, i visualized that guy hunting me with a pitchfork while writing down this question. But I don't understand how i could scan multiple websites with XML parser. — HyderA, May 12 '10 at 12:14
An interesting picture to imagine ;-) However, he *is* right, you will have a hard time unleashing regexes to arbitrary HTML. Even if it works with your test data, someone might insert a tag here or append an attribute there, and your craftfully tailored regex is paying its dept to nature. — Boldewyn, May 12 '10 at 12:34
Use a HTML/XML parser and store a single XPath path per website. — Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams, May 12 '10 at 12:17

Jakub Hampl · Answer 1 · 2010-05-12T12:16:45.390

0

You are matching for class="body" your document has class=body: you're missing the quotes. Use "/<div class=\"?body\"?>(.*?)<\/div>/sui".

edited May 12 '10 at 12:16

answered May 12 '10 at 12:10

Jakub Hampl

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And yes: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags/1732454#1732454 – Jakub Hampl May 12 '10 at 12:11
That's one thing, but he also forgot to escape the quotes (you as well), since the whole string block is wrapped in the same type of quotes. – treznik May 12 '10 at 12:14
Noooooooo! No more references to that! It's an awesome answer and everything, but the constant references to that question are getting as old as Jon Skeet facts. – karim79 May 12 '10 at 12:14
The original HTML does have quotes. I wrote that down as an example. In any case, my bad. I should've been clearer. – HyderA May 12 '10 at 12:15
Also you probably shouldn't escape the brackets. – Jakub Hampl May 12 '10 at 12:17
@karim79 As long as they keep asking :D – Jakub Hampl May 12 '10 at 12:20
@karim79: Only Jon Skeet is allowed to post links to that question. – Tim Pietzcker May 12 '10 at 13:10

How do I extract HTML content using Regex in PHP

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