Find content between HTML tags using RegEx

Question

I want to extract content of a page which has the attribute name itemprop. Suppose I have page which has different HTML tags that have the attribute named itemprop so I want text in between those tags,

For a heading:

<h1 itemprop="name" class="h2">Whirlpool Direct Drive Washer Motor Coupling</h1>

Table data from td tag:

<td itemprop="productID">AP3963893</td>

Here the itemprop attribute is common. So I need data in between these tags like Whirlpool Direct Drive Washer Motor Coupling and AP3963893 using regexp .

Below is my code (which is currently not working)

preg_match_all(
    '/<div class=\"pdct\-inf\">(.*?)<\/div>/s',
    $producturl,
    $posts    
);

My code:

<?php
    define('CSV_PATH','csvfiles/');
    $csv_file = CSV_PATH . "producturl.csv"; // Name of your producturl file
    $csvfile = fopen($csv_file, 'r');
    $csv_fileoutput = CSV_PATH . "productscraping.csv"; // Name of your product page data file
    $csvfileoutput = fopen($csv_fileoutput, 'a');

    $websitename = "http://www.appliancepartspros.com";

    while($data = fgetcsv($csvfile)) 
    {
        $producturl = $websitename . trim($data[1]);

        preg_match_all(
            '/<.*itemprop=\".*\".*>(.*?)<\/.*>/s',
            $producturl,
            $posts    
        );
        print_r($posts);
    }

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:23:44Z

1

Firstly, never ever use RegEx to parse HTML. Secondly, you can achieve this using jQuery quite simply by using the attribute selector:

var nameItemprop = $('[itemprop="name"]').text(); // = 'Whirlpool Direct Drive Washer Motor Coupling'
var productIdItemprop = $('[itemprop="productID"]').text(); // = 'AP3963893'

Note however, that it is invalid HTML to create your own non-standard attributes. You should ideally be using data-* attributes to contain data associated with those elements:

<h1 data-itemprop="name" class="h2">Whirlpool Direct Drive Washer Motor Coupling</h1>
<td data-itemprop="productID">AP3963893</td>

var nameItemprop = $('[data-itemprop="name"]').text();
var productIdItemprop = $('[data-itemprop="productID"]').text();

Finally, should there ever be multiple elements with the same itemprop attribute then you would need to loop through them to get the value from each individual element.

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:23

CommunityBot

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answered Mar 3, 2016 at 7:51

Rory McCrossan

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3 Comments

Steve Over a year ago

can you please suggest me php example using regexp, because as there are lot of product url which is store in csv file.

Rory McCrossan Over a year ago

Sorry, I don't know PHP. As you tagged jQuery I used that.

Steve Over a year ago

Updated my question with my code .. please have a look

Remo · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-03 08:02:54Z

0

As already mentioned, you shouldn't use RegExp to parse HTML, but if you insist on doing it, here's a pattern that should work:

$producturl = '<h1 itemprop="name" class="h2">Whirlpool Direct Drive Washer Motor Coupling</h1>';

if (preg_match_all(
   '/<.*itemprop=\".*\".*>(.*?)<\/.*>/s',
   $producturl,
   $posts    
)) {
    print_r($posts);
}

This creates the following output:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => <h1 itemprop="name" class="h2">Whirlpool Direct Drive Washer Motor Coupling</h1>
        )
    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => Whirlpool Direct Drive Washer Motor Coupling
        )
)

edited Mar 3, 2016 at 8:02

answered Mar 3, 2016 at 7:56

Remo

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3 Comments

Steve Over a year ago

it returns blank array.. I have updated my code in question .. please have a look.

Remo Over a year ago

I've added a complete example so you can copy, paste and execute it. That works for me..

Steve Over a year ago

you are passing html content to producturl variable, but in my case its a absolute url ..

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