retrieve all images path from string with PHP

Question

How do I get all images path from a string? Note I just want the path containing the word "media".

For example given this string (part of the DOM)

<div class="my-class">
   <img src="http://my-website.com/cache/media/2017/10/img67.jpeg" class="" alt="test" width="120" height="100">
   <img src="http://my-website.com/cache/2017/10/img68.png" class="" alt="test" width="120" height="100">
   <img src="http://my-website.com/cache/media/2017/10/img69.jpg" class="" alt="test" width="120" height="100">
   <h2 class="uk-margin-top-remove">About us</h2>                
</div>

I want an array containing a similar result:

array(
  [0] => "http://my-website.com/cache/media/2017/10/img67.png"
  [1] => "http://my-website.com/cache/media/2017/10/img69.png"
);

I don't want the second img because src attribute doesn't contain the word "media".

You have been a member long enough to know you should include code. — Andreas, Jan 25 '18 at 18:56
Dig into DOMDocument object, and try something out. Learning is best by attempting! You'll also stumble across all kinds of fun new things while you try. ... and you have way too many questions without accepted answers. — IncredibleHat, Jan 25 '18 at 18:57
Don't use regex for this. Use a parser: [H̸̡̪̯ͨ͊̽̅̾̎Ȩ̬̩̾͛ͪ̈́̀́͘ ̶̧̨̱̹̭̯ͧ̾ͬC̷̙̲̝͖ͭ̏ͥͮ͟Oͮ͏̮̪̝͍M̲̖͊̒ͪͩͬ̚̚͜Ȇ̴̟̟͙̞ͩ͌͝S̨̥̫͎̭ͯ̿̔̀ͅ](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags) — ctwheels, Jan 25 '18 at 18:58
Doing a simple search like. `php get src from img` gives you lots of answers. Then you can easily tailor it to your issue. FYI `regex` is not ideal here. `DOMDocument()` is right — Rotimi, Jan 25 '18 at 18:59
@ctwheels: I could say the same with the pony link but I wouldn't dare... — Jan, Jan 25 '18 at 19:05

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 25 '18 at 19:02

You could use preg_match_all() to get URLs but it is even better to use a DOM reader.

$str = '<div class="my-class">
   <img src="http://my-website.com/cache/media/2017/10/img67.jpeg" class="" alt="test" width="120" height="100">
   <img src="http://my-website.com/cache/2017/10/img68.png" class="" alt="test" width="120" height="100">
   <img src="http://my-website.com/cache/media/2017/10/img69.jpg" class="" alt="test" width="120" height="100">
   <h2 class="uk-margin-top-remove">About us</h2>                
</div>' ;

$matches = [] ;
preg_match_all('~(http\://my-website\.com/cache/media/(.*?))"~i', $str, $matches) ;
var_dump($matches[1]);

Will returns :

array(2) {
  [0]=>
  string(52) "http://my-website.com/cache/media/2017/10/img67.jpeg"
  [1]=>
  string(51) "http://my-website.com/cache/media/2017/10/img69.jpg"
}

Jan · Answer 2 · 2018-01-25T20:00:25.093

Some boilerplate code to get you started:

<?php

$data = <<<DATA
<div class="my-class">
   <img src="http://my-website.com/cache/media/2017/10/img67.jpeg" class="" alt="test" width="120" height="100">
   <img src="http://my-website.com/cache/2017/10/img68.png" class="" alt="test" width="120" height="100">
   <img src="http://my-website.com/cache/media/2017/10/img69.jpg" class="" alt="test" width="120" height="100">
   <h2 class="uk-margin-top-remove">About us</h2>                
</div>
DATA;

# set up the dom
$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadHTML($data, LIBXML_HTML_NOIMPLIED | LIBXML_HTML_NODEFDTD);# | LIBXML_COMPACT | LIBXML_NOENT );

# set up the xpath
$xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);

foreach ($xpath->query("//img[contains(@src, '/media/')]/@src") as $image) {
    echo $image->nodeValue . "\n";
}

Which yields

http://my-website.com/cache/media/2017/10/img67.jpeg
http://my-website.com/cache/media/2017/10/img69.jpg

This loads the DOM and uses an xpath query for every image where we'll loop over afterwards.

If for some reasons (why?) you are unable to use a DOM parser, your could use the secondbest option:

<img
(?s:(?!>).)+?
src=(['"])
(?P<src>(?:(?!\1).)+?/media/.*?\1)

And use the src group, see a demo on regex101.com.

I was waiting for the Jan parser answer. User only wants URLs containing `media` though — ctwheels, Jan 25 '18 at 19:01
@ctwheels: Updated thanks. I might get a bit calmer once I got the golden `regex` badge (only two to go!) — Jan, Jan 25 '18 at 19:04

retrieve all images path from string with PHP

2 Answers2