PHP preg_match_all question

Question

I have a question about a regular function that is giving me grief. I have a list of items that is separated in tags. I am trying to extract everything between two particular tags (which occur multiple times). Here is a sample of the list I am parsing:


<ResumeResultItem_V3>
    <ResumeTitle>Johnson</ResumeTitle>
    <RecentEmployer>University of Phoenix</RecentEmployer>
    <RecentJobTitle>Advisor</RecentJobTitle>
    <RecentPay>40000</RecentPay>
</ResumeResultItem_V3>

<ResumeResultItem_V3>
    <ResumeTitle>ResumeforJake</ResumeTitle>
    <RecentEmployer>APEX</RecentEmployer>
    <RecentJobTitle>Consultant</RecentJobTitle>
    <RecentPay>66000</RecentPay>
</ResumeResultItem_V3>

I'm trying to get everything in between "ResumeResultItem_V3" as a blob of text, but I can't seem to get the expression right.

Here is the code I have so far:




$test = "(<ResumeResultItem_V3>)";
$test2 = "(<\/ResumeResultItem_V3>)";

preg_match_all("/" . $test . "(\w+)" . $test2 . "/", $xml, $matches);

foreach ($matches[0] as $match) {
       echo $match;
       echo "<br /><br />";
}

How can I fix this?

As this seems to be some kind of XML data, better use a proper XML parser. — Gumbo, May 19 '11 at 16:27

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered May 19 '11 at 16:31

2

I'm making assuptions about your XML structure, but I really think you need an example using an XML parser, like SimpleXML.

$xml = new SimpleXMLElement( $file );
foreach( $xml->ResumeResultItem_V3 as $ResumeResultItem_V3 )
    echo (string)$ResumeResultItem_V3;

answered May 19 '11 at 16:31

Kevin Peno

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A previous answer did what I needed, but I will look into SimpleXML for future problems I run into. I am not familiar with it and haven't had time to review it. Thank you for the answer! – Shattuck May 19 '11 at 16:37

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:12

1

Ignoring that you probably ought to use an XML parser, and that PHP has one you can use...

The issue is that \w+ matches word characters, not any character. A space and most punctuation aren't word characters, so your match fails. You need instead to match "any" character . for as many as there are +, but because you might be able to group excessively, you need a modifier to make it non-greedy, ?. Your expression should work if you change \w+ to .+? -- the any character match also requires an s modifier, so:

preg_match_all('/' . $test . '(.+?)' . $test2 . '/s', $xml, $matches);

edited May 23 '17 at 12:12

Community

1
1

answered May 19 '11 at 16:28

Mark Elliot

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Thank you for your answer! This worked perfectly, but I changed the + for a * – Shattuck May 19 '11 at 16:38

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 19 '11 at 16:29

You are probably better off with simplexml for extracting the data here.

But to also answer the regex question. \w+ only matches word-characters. But in this case you want it to match pretty much everything in between the delimeters, which .*? can be used for.

preg_match_all("/$test(.*?)$test2/s", $xml, $matches);

Only works with the /s modifier though.

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered May 19 '11 at 16:40

If you can use the output as an array with 1 item for each of the "text blob" matches, try this:

<?php
$text =
"<ResumeResultItem_V3>
    <ResumeTitle>Johnson</ResumeTitle>
    <RecentEmployer>University of Phoenix</RecentEmployer>
    <RecentJobTitle>Advisor</RecentJobTitle>
    <RecentPay>40000</RecentPay>
</ResumeResultItem_V3>

<ResumeResultItem_V3>
    <ResumeTitle>ResumeforJake</ResumeTitle>
    <RecentEmployer>APEX</RecentEmployer>
    <RecentJobTitle>Consultant</RecentJobTitle>
    <RecentPay>66000</RecentPay>
</ResumeResultItem_V3>";

$matches = preg_split("/<\/ResumeResultItem_V3>/",preg_replace("/<ResumeResultItem_V3>/","",$text));
print_r($matches);
?>

Results in:

Array
(
    [0] => 
    <ResumeTitle>Johnson</ResumeTitle>
    <RecentEmployer>University of Phoenix</RecentEmployer>
    <RecentJobTitle>Advisor</RecentJobTitle>
    <RecentPay>40000</RecentPay>

    [1] => 


    <ResumeTitle>ResumeforJake</ResumeTitle>
    <RecentEmployer>APEX</RecentEmployer>
    <RecentJobTitle>Consultant</RecentJobTitle>
    <RecentPay>66000</RecentPay>

    [2] => 
)

Thank you for the reply. What a great way to look at the code. I got it working with a previous answer, but this will definitely help in the future. — Shattuck, May 19 '11 at 16:42

PHP preg_match_all question

4 Answers4