How to get data from HTML using regex

Question

I have following HTML

<table class="profile-stats">
  <tr>
    <td class="stat">
      <div class="statnum">8</div>
      <div class="statlabel"> Tweets </div>
    </td>
    <td class="stat">
        <a href="/THEDJMHA/following">
          <div class="statnum">13</div>
          <div class="statlabel"> Following </div>
        </a>
    </td>
    <td class="stat stat-last">
        <a href="/THEDJMHA/followers">
          <div class="statnum">22</div>
          <div class="statlabel"> Followers </div>
        </a>
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>

I want to get value from <td class="stat stat-last"> => <div class="statnum"> = 22.

I have tried the follow regex but does not any found match.

/<div\sclass="statnum">^(.)\?<\/div>/ig

Enable error_reporting. Niether the /g flag nor the ^ anchor would work there. And the escaped \? is misplaced as well. A typical placeholder is (.*?). -- But if you're that unversed with regexp: the off-topic answer to your question would be to use a DOM traversal frontend (such as qp($html)->find(".statnum"), or plain DOMDocument if you'd prefer tedious and brittle). — mario
– mario, Commented Aug 20, 2015 at 12:34
I think you shouldn't use ^ in that place.. Try this /<div\s+class="statnum">([^>]+)<\/div>/ig. — starikovs
– starikovs, Commented Aug 20, 2015 at 12:43
Anyway, that's not a good idea to parse HTML with regexps. You always will find a new bug. — starikovs
– starikovs, Commented Aug 20, 2015 at 12:47
If I'm not wrong then, what actually you needed over here is the text content of div i.e. 8,13,22 — Narendrasingh Sisodia
– Narendrasingh Sisodia, Commented Aug 20, 2015 at 12:50

chris85 · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-20 13:11:13Z

Here's a way to accomplish this using a parser.

<?php
$html = '<table class="profile-stats">
  <tr>
    <td class="stat">
      <div class="statnum">8</div>
      <div class="statlabel"> Tweets </div>
    </td>
    <td class="stat">
        <a href="/THEDJMHA/following">
          <div class="statnum">13</div>
          <div class="statlabel"> Following </div>
        </a>
    </td>
    <td class="stat stat-last">
        <a href="/THEDJMHA/followers">
          <div class="statnum">22</div>
          <div class="statlabel"> Followers </div>
        </a>
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>';
$doc = new DOMDocument(); //make a dom object
$doc->loadHTML($html);
$tds = $doc->getElementsByTagName('td');
foreach ($tds as $cell) { //loop through all Cells
    if(strpos($cell->getAttribute('class'), 'stat-last')){
        $divs = $cell->getElementsByTagName('div');
        foreach($divs as $div) { // loop through all divs of the cell
            if($div->getAttribute('class') == 'statnum'){
                echo $div->nodeValue;
            }
        }
    }
}

Output:

22

...or using an xpath...

$doc = new DOMDocument(); //make a dom object
$doc->loadHTML($html);
$xpath = new DOMXpath($doc);
$statnums = $xpath->query("//td[@class='stat stat-last']/a/div[@class='statnum']");
foreach($statnums as $statnum) {
    echo $statnum->nodeValue;
}

Output:

22

or if you realllly wanted to regex it...

<?php
$html = '<table class="profile-stats">
  <tr>
    <td class="stat">
      <div class="statnum">8</div>
      <div class="statlabel"> Tweets </div>
    </td>
    <td class="stat">
        <a href="/THEDJMHA/following">
          <div class="statnum">13</div>
          <div class="statlabel"> Following </div>
        </a>
    </td>
    <td class="stat stat-last">
        <a href="/THEDJMHA/followers">
          <div class="statnum">22</div>
          <div class="statlabel"> Followers </div>
        </a>
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>';
preg_match('~td class=".*?stat-last">.*?<div class="statnum">(.*?)<~s', $html, $num);
echo $num[1];

Output:

22

Regex demo: https://regex101.com/r/kM6kI2/1

veta · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-20 12:37:18Z

2

I think it would be better if you use an XML parser for that instead of regex. SimpleXML can do the job for you: http://php.net/manual/en/book.simplexml.php

answered Aug 20, 2015 at 12:37

veta

765 bronze badges

2 Comments

dakab Over a year ago

And how do one get the value from the node with the software you suggested?

veta Over a year ago

HTML is a specific XML, so it will work with HTML. The SimpleXMLElement class will contain all data related with the node.

jmrah · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-20 12:45:05Z

2

/<td class="stat stat-last">.*?<div class="statnum">(\d+)/si

Your match is in the first capture group. Notice the use of the s option at the end. Makes '.' match new line characters.

answered Aug 20, 2015 at 12:45

jmrah

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Comments

mocak · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-20 12:37:32Z

1

You can edit your pattern like that:

/<div\sclass="statnum">(.*?)<\/div>/ig

answered Aug 20, 2015 at 12:37

mocak

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