PHP preg_match_all html

Question

how can i create a preg_match_all regex pattern for php to give me this code?

<td class="class2">&nbsp;</td>
<td class="class2" align="right"><span class="DarkText">I WANT THIS TEXT</span></td>

To get me the text inside the span class? thanks!

Please don't use regexes to parse HTML. It is a path to sorrow and broken code. — Andy Lester, Sep 16 '10 at 22:15

score 7 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:53

7

You can use:

preg_match_all("!<span[^>]+>(.*?)</span>!", $str, $matches);

Then your text will be inside the first capture group (as seen on rubular)

With that out of the way, note that regex shouldn't be used to parse HTML. You will be better off using an XML parser, unless it's something really, really simple.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:53

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answered Sep 16 '10 at 00:08

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+1 for answer and pointing to best solution (parser). And for including the link to Bobince's famous answer. – alex Sep 16 '10 at 00:16

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 15 '19 at 16:27

You can also not use ! at start and end, and use much simpler code with T-Regx

$pattern = "<span[^>]+>(.*?)</span>"; // no delimiters :)

$string = '
<td class="class2">&nbsp;</td>
<td class="class2" align="right"><span class="DarkText">I WANT THIS 
TEXT</span></td>
';

Then just use match()->group():

$text = Pattern::of($pattern)->match($string)->group(1)->first();

$text // 'I WANT THIS TEXT'

Check it online: https://regex101.com/r/nxTvS1/1

PHP preg_match_all html

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