Regex for html attributes in php

Question

I am trying to parse a string of HTML tag attributes in php. There can be 3 cases:

attribute="value"  //inside the quotes there can be everything also other escaped quotes
attribute          //without the value
attribute=value    //without quotes so there are only alphanumeric characters

can someone help me to find a regex that can get in the first match the attribute name and in the second the attribute value (if it's present)?

Why are you trying to do this with a regular expression? A real HTML parser is a much easier approach. — Quentin
– Quentin, Commented Sep 4, 2009 at 15:47
Because i'm building my own library and i can't take the code from another one — mck89
– mck89, Commented Sep 4, 2009 at 15:49
You mean you want us to tell you how to use a glass bottle for pounding your nails? weblogs.asp.net/alex_papadimoulis/archive/2005/05/25/… — soulmerge
– soulmerge, Commented Sep 4, 2009 at 16:00
@mck89: please, don't feel attacked, it wasn't my intention. Its just that you are going through the this the hard way. Didn't attempt to offend you, just wanted to know why you couldn't use neither existing code nor an html parser. — Esteban Küber
– Esteban Küber, Commented Sep 4, 2009 at 16:03

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:34:04Z

9

Never ever use regular expressions for processing html, especially if you're writing a library and don't know what your input will look like. Take a look at simplexml, for example.

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:34

CommunityBot

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answered Sep 4, 2009 at 15:58

soulmerge

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Peter Ajtai · Accepted Answer · 2010-08-25 22:42:00Z

2

Give this a try and see if it is what you want to extract from the tags.

preg_match_all('/( \\w{1,}="\\w{1,}"| \\w{1,}=\\w{1,}| \\w{1,})/i', 
    $content, 
    $result, 
    PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);
$result = $result[0];

The regex pulls each attribute, excludes the tag name, and puts the results in an array so you will be able to loop over the first and second attributes.

edited Aug 25, 2010 at 22:42

Peter Ajtai

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answered Sep 4, 2009 at 16:09

JasonBartholme

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2 Comments

mck89 Over a year ago

I found a faster and more precise solution, but i try your regex and it seems to work so it's a good starting point and i take your answer as solution. Thank you!

Harsh Patel Over a year ago

stackoverflow.com/a/70079532/14344959

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