Converting regex for use in php preg_replace

Question

I've been hitting a brick wall with trying to use the following regex in PHP.

<li.*?class="(.*?gchoice.*?)">((.|\n)*?)<\/li>

This works fine in the following test selecting only the nested list item when i try it in a jquery based tester

 <li class="gfield gfield_contains_required" id="field_1_17">
<label class="gfield_label">Categories<span class="gfield_required"> (Required) </span>        </label>
<div class="ginput_container">
<ul id="input_1_17" class="gfield_checkbox">
<li class="gchoice_17_1">
    <input type="checkbox" id="choice_17_1" value="First Choice" name="input_17.1">
    <label id="label_17_1" for="choice_17_1">First Choice</label>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</li>

However in PHP it just doesn't want to work no matter how I try to escape the characters and no matter the delimiter I try and use. From what I know I should only need a / or # at the stand and end, however when that did not work I tried escaping the brackets as well and yet it still didn't work.

Are you sure you want to use regex to parse HTML?

Niet the Dark Absol
– Niet the Dark Absol

2014-06-11 10:45:55 +00:00
Commented Jun 11, 2014 at 10:45 — Niet the Dark Absol
– Niet the Dark Absol, Commented Jun 11, 2014 at 10:45

Niet the Dark Absol · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-11 10:50:31Z

6

Don't use regex.

$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadHTML($your_html_source);
$xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);
$target = $xpath->query("//li[contains(@class,'gchoice')]");
foreach($target as $node) {
    var_dump($node); // do something
}

answered Jun 11, 2014 at 10:50

Niet the Dark Absol

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5 Comments

zx81 Over a year ago

So much better. :) @ChrisMorris I removed my answer, but for your reference look up the (?s) modifier.

Chris Morris Over a year ago

I can't do this as I need the regex to pick up the rest of the class name, the name is dynamic so I only know the first part, Unless there is a way with the DOM method to wildcard the class name.

Taemyr Over a year ago

@ChrisMorris The answer uses the Contains function. So it looks for li nodes that has a class attribute that includes the substring gchoice. What further need for wildcards do you need? Once you have the node extracting the complete class attribute should be straight forward.

Chris Morris Over a year ago

Sorry I've not used DOM I'm struggling to see how I could use this as I'm also trying to replace that node with a preg_replace later in my code.

Niet the Dark Absol Over a year ago

@ChrisMorris Keep using DOMDocument functions, as they will ensure that your result is valid no matter what.

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