Simple preg match with <p> tags

[a1amattyj]

Hello,

 

Trying to get all content within paragraph tags. Im using:

 

preg_match("#<p>(.*)</p>#i", $contents, $match);

 

There are around 8 paragraphs on this page, but it only matches two - and thats the first <p> tag with the last </p> tag. Not to sure what I should change (.*) too?

 

Thanks

[AyKay47]

preg_match will only match 1 set...use preg_match_all

[Psycho]

Well, you also have the problem that your regex is "greedy". Even if you used preg_match_all() it would only return one result - everything from the very first "<p>" to the very last "</p>". You need to make the expression "non-greedy" so that it will return each instance of "<p>" to the next "</p>". It is the asterisk (*) that is behaving in a greedy manner in that expression. One way to make it non-greedy is to add a question mark (?) after the asterisk.

 

Also, I think you have to escape the forward slash. And I would also add some handling for the opening paragraph tag in case there are additional attributes for the paragraph tag such as a class or style attribute.

 

Try this:

preg_match_all("#<p[^>]*>(.*?)<\/p>#i", $contents, $matches);

[AyKay47]

good catch mjdamato thank you, only thing i'll add is the forward slash will not need to be escaped since the OP is using the # delimiter

 

preg_match_all("#<p[^>]*>(.*?)</p>#i", $contents, $matches);

 

nothing major though

 

 

[a1amattyj]

Thank you guys, very informative!

[.josh]

you may also need to add the 's' modifier... technically linebreaks shouldn't be within p tags but it's perfectly valid for them to be, and some people like doing it to make the source code more readable in their editor.