Find all HTML table rows in PHP with regexp

Question

Trying to find all HTML <table> rows with this operator, but nothing:

preg_match_all("#<tr[^>]*>.*</tr>#", $content, $matches);

what's wrong?

The pony he comes... DON'T USE REGULAR EXPRESSIONS TO PARSE HTML! — Matt
– Matt, Commented Aug 7, 2012 at 13:50
I do wonder if we should be able to close questions with a canned 'HTML/Regexp' reason — Brian Agnew
– Brian Agnew, Commented Aug 7, 2012 at 13:51

DavidS · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-07 13:52:29Z

4

preg_match_all ('#<tr[^>]*>(.*?)</tr>#s')

Added the "s" flag, so that it also matches newlines, a question mark to the match (lazy), and also added parenthesis (to capture the group).

answered Aug 7, 2012 at 13:52

DavidS

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Comments

Niet the Dark Absol · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-07 13:51:35Z

3

Any regex will have trouble with nested tables, unless you get into complicated recursive expressions.

Try this instead:

$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadHTML($content);
$matches = $dom->getElementsByTagName("tr");
$count = $matches->length;

answered Aug 7, 2012 at 13:51

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And what if I want look into HTML between <tr> tags after that?

Since $matches is a DOMNodeList, each node has a property childNodes which is another DOMNodeList of its children.

@Kolink Well i may case when i have to parse an invalid HTML the DOMDocument is failed to parse.

Brian Agnew · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-07 13:50:34Z

3

I think you'll have a lot more success with a PHP HTML parser.

answered Aug 7, 2012 at 13:50

Brian Agnew

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