Parse html issue

[nickjonnes]

hey all,

i as you will be able to see below i have a large amount of div's inside div's i need to get allthe information from the div class "items". i am sorry to post such a large source but i didnt want to half write out the source and waste everyones time. i have spent a large amount of time trying to figure this one out and i have been googling alot but i seem to have no luck.

can anyone please help?

 

<div class="content">      
    <div class="main">
        <div class="hero hero-small">
            <div id="slide-wrapper">
                <div class="items">
                    <div class="container-outer">
                        <div class="container-inner">

<img src= "www.example.com/picture.jpg"
class= "class" style="width: 300px; height: 200px;" /><a href= "www.importantsite.com/" target="_blank">
<h3>title</h3></a> <a href= "http://anotherimportantsite.com/"target="_blank">
<h4><span>blahblah</span></h4></a><p>blahblah<span>... <img src="http://example.com/blah.gif" alt="" class="example" /></span></p>

                        </div>
                    </div>
<div class="container-outer">
                        <div class="container-inner">

<img src= "www.example.com/picture.jpg"
class= "class" style="width: 300px; height: 200px;" /><a href= "www.importantsite.com/" target="_blank">
<h3>title</h3></a> <a href= "http://anotherimportantsite.com/"target="_blank">
<h4><span>blahblah</span></h4></a><p>blahblah<span>... <img src="http://example.com/blah.gif" alt="" class="example" /></span></p>

                        </div>
                    </div>
<div class="container-outer">
                        <div class="container-inner">

<img src= "www.example.com/picture.jpg"
class= "class" style="width: 300px; height: 200px;" /><a href= "www.importantsite.com/" target="_blank">
<h3>title</h3></a> <a href= "http://anotherimportantsite.com/"target="_blank">
<h4><span>blahblah</span></h4></a><p>blahblah<span>... <img src="http://example.com/blah.gif" alt="" class="example" /></span></p>

                </div>
            </div>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>

[joe92]

You could use a positive lookahead.

 

$pattern = "~<div class=\"items\">(.*)</div>(?=</div></div></div></div>)~"

 

This should take the items div and everything after the items div up until an end div that is followed by at least 4 other divs, but will not return those 4 end divs. I haven't tested it though so please tell me if it works

[xyph]

This is too complicated for RegEx to work well.

 

Use an HTML parser, or string functions. I can show you how to do it with a parser, but you'll have to give me the entire document you want to parse.

[nickjonnes]

the document i am trying to get this from is mail.com it is their news slider. if you rightclick and go to view source you will see the a huge page. i have already read through it all and worked out that this part is the only part i need that is dynamic the rest is jsut fixed code like the slide. it is only the content that changes.

[nickjonnes]

hey all,

i solved the issue, it took me ages and i learnt a lot as i am not a php coder but here it what i did.

all form the power of google;)

thanks to everyone who helped and sorry to be so confusing

<?php
include 'simple_html_dom.php';
// Create DOM from string 
$dom = file_get_html('http://www.mail.com/');
$table = $dom->getElementById('slide-wrapper');
//$ret = $html->find('div[class id=content');
echo $table;
?>