Regular Expression in PHP: How to create a pattern for tables in html

Question

I am using latest PHP. I want to parse HTML page to get data.

HTML:

<table class="margin15" style="margin-left: 0pt; margin-right: 0pt;" width="100%" align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
TRs, TDs, Data
</table>

<table class="margin15" style="margin-left: 0pt; margin-right: 0pt;" width="100%" align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
TRs, TDs, Data
</table>

<table class="margin15" style="margin-left: 0pt; margin-right: 0pt;" width="100%" align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
TRs, TDs, Data
</table>

<table class="margin15" style="margin-left: 0pt; margin-right: 0pt;" width="100%" align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
TRs, TDs, Data
</table>

PHP Code:

<?php

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://www.test.com/mypage.html');  
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$result = curl_exec($ch);


$pattern = '/<table class="margin15" style="margin-left: 0pt; margin-right: 0pt;" width="100%" align="left" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">[^~]</table>/';
preg_match_all($pattern, $result, $matches);
print_r($matches);

?>

I am not able to get all tables. When I use simple $pattern='/table/';, it gives me exact result. How to create a pattern to get whole table at one array location?

You had better read this: stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/…, then delete your question. — gahooa
– gahooa, Commented Dec 14, 2009 at 17:03

Yacoby · Accepted Answer · 2009-12-14 17:01:37Z

6

Parsing HTML using regex is a pain at best as HTML is not regular, I suggest you use Simple HTML DOM.

answered Dec 14, 2009 at 17:01

Yacoby

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Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 10:33:03Z

3

You can't parse [X]HTML with regex, but you can try:

$pattern = '#<table(?:.*?)>(.*?)</table>#';

This won't work if there are nested tables.

edited May 23, 2017 at 10:33

CommunityBot

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answered Dec 14, 2009 at 17:03

Jordan Ryan Moore

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Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 10:24:37Z

2

Please have a look at this answer. It describes the usage of an HTML parser in PHP, which is what you want to do.

edited May 23, 2017 at 10:24

CommunityBot

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answered Dec 14, 2009 at 17:04

Svante

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AntonioCS · Accepted Answer · 2009-12-14 17:03:14Z

1

Or just use the DOM class php offers. I think it can do the same as simple html dom but much faster (don't' get me wrong, I really like Simple Html DOM, but it's slow for files with a few dozen lines)

answered Dec 14, 2009 at 17:03

AntonioCS

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1 Comment

Kzqai Over a year ago

php.net/manual/en/book.dom.php is the dom class he mentions, I wasn't aware of it, but I guess it is available in core.

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