preg_match() - can I do this?

[roy_werner]

Hi,

I have a "scraped" string and want to use the preg_match() to give me just a pice of it.

The string is from a webpage, but is dynamic....

 

here´s the typical string format:

 

<a class="stripped-link lightblue-link profile-page-link" href="/x/xxx+xxx+xxx/xxxx">HER IS THE WANTED TEXT</a>

 

The orange is static. The green (the xxxx is the dynamic part of the string)

Can I use the preg_match() for this?

 

thanks (and yes I´m a newbe.... )

[CroNiX]

You really shouldn't use regex for that, but use the DOM which is more solid.

[CroNiX]

A simple example:

$anchor = '<a class="stripped-link lightblue-link profile-page-link" href="/x/xxx+xxx+xxx/xxxx">HER IS THE WANTED TEXT</a>';
$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadHTML($anchor);


foreach($dom->getElementsByTagName('a') as $a)
{
  echo "{$a->nodeValue}<br>"; //"HER IS THE WANTED TEXT"
}

[scootstah]

I agree with CroNiX. Regex for this is a bit slow. However, since you asked for it, something like this should work:

<a class="stripped-link lightblue-link profile-page-link" href=".*">(.*?)<\/a>

You can adjust it depending on what kind of specificity you need. If you just wanted to match any old anchor tag, then maybe more like:

<a.*>(.*?)<\/a>

[roy_werner]

Thanks for replays!! I got it up and running by using scootstah sug.