Need help w/ regular expressions

[yacaph]

Hi,

 

I'm having problems understanding how to create regular expressions. I need to convert a portion of a newsletter that is retrieved from a MySQL table to plain text for a mailing. This example is for one item in this portion of the newsletter:

 

<span style="font-weight: bold;">New:  Must See </span>

<br style="font-weight: bold;" /><span style="font-weight: bold;">DVD Movie</span><br style="font-weight: bold;" />

<a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.somesite.com/view_trailer.asp" target="_self">View Movie Trailer</a>

<br style="font-weight: bold;" /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.somesite.php" target="_self">Purchase for Just $15</a>

 

Most of the time the items contained in this portion of the newsletter are similar to the formatting used in the example.

 

I need to be able to keep each item's text and links together so that the plain text will look something like:

 

New:  Must See DVD Movie

View Movie Trailer http://www.somesite.com/view_trailer.php

Purchase for Just $15 http://www.somesite.php

 

I found a regular expression for the links (which works but I don't understand it):

$regexp = "<a\s[^>]*href=(\"??)([^\" >]*?)\\1[^>]*>(.*)<\/a>";

 

which returns the following in an array but, by itself it's not very usable as the only text I can retrieve is $matches[3] & I really need to get the text from the <span> tags too ;

    [2] => Array

        (

            [0] => <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.somesite.com/view_trailer.asp" target="_self">View Movie Trailer</a>

            [1] => "

            [2] => http://www.somesite.com/view_trailer.php

            [3] => View Movie Trailer

        )

 

    [3] => Array

        (

            [0] => <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.somesite.com/products/dvd_new.php" target="_self">Purchase for Just $15</a>

            [1] => "

            [2] => http://www.isomesite/dvd_new.php

            [3] => Purchase for Just $15

 

Is this even doable with regular expressions, or is there a better way?

 

Any and all help will be greatly appreciated,

 

Joseph

 

[.josh]

is there a better way?

 

The better way would be to not store formatted info in your database in the first place.  Database data should be as raw and unformatted as possible, so that you don't have issues like this come up, when you are wanting to use the info for something else that requires a different format.

 

 

For the stuff between the span tags

 

$regexp = "<span[^>]*>(.*?)<\/span>";

 

 

 

[yacaph]

Thanks for the response.

 

Although I agree with you assessment of the data storage situation, in this case I've inherited a legacy application, and those type of changes at this point in time would be extensive & not cost effective.

 

And thanks for the span expression.

 

Joseph