[SOLVED] regexp html parsing help

[agrafuese]

Hello, I want to parse some links (just the text part) from HTML documents, but I only want to grab the ones that are contained within a certain DIV. Each link is separated by a comma and then a space (the last link is followed by just a space, obviously), and there can be any number of links within the DIV (it's not always the same). Here's what a typical page would look like:

 

<div id="the_id"><a href="one_url.html">Some Text</a>, <a href="another_url.html">Some Text</a> </div>

 

This is the code for the regex I have so far (using preg_match_all). I know it's wrong, but I just wanted to show where I am in terms of thinking so someone can tell me how far off I am :

 

"/<div\sid=\"the_id\">(<a\shref=\"[^\"]+\">(.*)<\/a>,?\s)*<\/div>/siU"

 

 

 

[agrafuese]

Maybe I was a bit too vague about this question...here's a better way to put it.

 

I have this very simple regex to extract the text from links (not the url, just the text), like so:

 

"/<a\shref=\"[^\"]+\">(.*)<\/a>,?\s/siU"

 

I know it's not as fool-proof as a normal link parsing regex should be, but that's fine for me at the moment. Now, what I want to do is extract only the links that are nested within a particular DIV. As of right now, I have the following code which does the job using a preg_match statement and a preg_match_all statement (see below), but I was wondering if this is possible with just one preg_match_all statement. This is something I am more curious about because I'd like to do it the "right" way, but like I said, the code I have right now is technically working. Any help would be appreciated.

 

$whole_string = '<div id="the_id"><a href="one_url.html">Some Text1</a>, <a href="another_url.html">Some Text2</a> </div>';

$whole_pattern = "/<div\sid=\"the_id\">(.*)<\/div>/siU";

preg_match($whole_pattern, $whole_string, $sub_matches); // extract the links from the DIV

$sub_pattern = "/<a\shref=\"[^\"]+\">(.*)<\/a>/siU";

preg_match_all($sub_pattern, $sub_matches[1], $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER); // extract the text from the links

foreach($matches as $match) {

$join_string .= $match[1] . ', '; // formats the link text like so: Some Text1, Some Text2, etc...

}

$insert_string = substr($join_string, 0, -2); // removes the last comma and space

...etc...

 

 

[agrafuese]

UPDATE: I ended up going a different route all together on this project, so I no longer need the advice. If you still want to answer the question, however, feel free