Should I use regex to parse this string of html table data?

Question

What's the best way to parse this data? Should I use regex or something else? The data is in html, but I found it from a website and will be parsing this and only this string (note: string is much longer - over 1,300 instances - only two below) - note I use php & jquery for most web programming.

I only need to extract the data in the second td and only the anchor text inside the anchor - in instance 1, it's: Best, Jahvid DET RB

And I only need to run this loop one time.

<tr class="oddtablerow"><td class="rank">1.</td><td class="rank">1.</td><td class="player"><a href="http://football22.myfantasyleague.com/2010/player?L=34793&amp;P=9839"  title="Salary: $2250000, Year: 3, Status: 3, Info: Drafted 10 1:04 Team, Week 3: at Vikings Sun 1:00 p.m. ET" class="position_rb">Best, Jahvid DET RB</a> (R) </td><td class="points tot">53.90</td><td class="points avg">26.950</td><td class="points"><a href="detailed?L=34793&amp;W=1&amp;P=9839&amp;YEAR=2010">17.55</a></td> 
<td class="points"><a href="detailed?L=34793&amp;W=2&amp;P=9839&amp;YEAR=2010">36.35</a></td> 
<td class="status"><a title="Owner: William Gold"  class="franchise_0009" href="http://football22.myfantasyleague.com/2010/options?L=34793&amp;F=0009&amp;O=01">Team Name</a> - <a href="options?L=34793&amp;O=05&amp;FRANCHISE=0013,0009&amp;PLAYER=9839,">Trade</a></td><td class="week">7</td><td class="salary">$2250000</td></tr> 
<tr class="eventablerow myfranchise "><td class="rank">2.</td><td class="rank">2.</td><td class="player"><a href="http://football22.myfantasyleague.com/2010/player?L=34793&amp;P=3291"  title="Salary: $7400000, Year: 3, Status: 3, Info: , Week 3: at Broncos Sun 4:15 p.m. ET" class="position_qb">Manning, Peyton IND QB</a></td><td class="points tot">49.61</td><td class="points avg">24.805</td><td class="points"><a href="detailed?L=34793&amp;W=1&amp;P=3291&amp;YEAR=2010">26.66</a></td> 
<td class="points"><a href="detailed?L=34793&amp;W=2&amp;P=3291&amp;YEAR=2010">22.95</a></td> 
<td class="status"><a title="Owner: Robert M. Cavezza "  class="myfranchise franchise_0013" href="http://football22.myfantasyleague.com/2010/options?L=34793&amp;F=0013&amp;O=01">The Bullies</a></td><td class="week">7</td><td class="salary">$7400000</td></tr>

Edit: What happened to the jquery answer? I was about to implement it but it disappeared

This may be the most upvoted answer on the site. You're probably better off using a proper html parser and pulling information out of that. — Roman
– Roman, Commented Sep 22, 2010 at 1:54
Is there a way to view old answers that were deleted either by admins or by the author? — Bob Cavezza
– Bob Cavezza, Commented Sep 22, 2010 at 2:57
It was deleted by the author and jQuery is not related at all with PHP this is probably the reason why it was deleted. — HoLyVieR
– HoLyVieR, Commented Sep 22, 2010 at 2:58

Community · Accepted Answer · 2023-11-17 19:22:09Z

1

If you are looking for a solution with the fastest execution speed XmlReader is one of the fastest XML parser. It is a bit harder to use, then other solution such as DOM, but since you want to parse a lot of entry, performance is probably important.

Otherwise DOM is pretty simple to use. You can find a simple example of how to use in this answer I gave on an other question.

If you want to load up your content as a string here's how you do it :

XMLReader

$foo = new XMLReader();
$foo->xml($yourStringHere);

DOMDocument

$foo = new DOMDocument();
$foo->loadHTML($yourStringHere);

edited Nov 17, 2023 at 19:22

CommunityBot

11 silver badge

answered Sep 22, 2010 at 3:06

HoLyVieR

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3 Comments

Bob Cavezza Over a year ago

To use these xml readers, do I need to change this data into an xml object and then parse the code? or can I parse the xml using this data as a php string?

Bob Cavezza Over a year ago

I copy & pasted an html off a website into a string - so the string is considered xml or do I have to build a domdocument? - In your example, you use the domdocument and an html file - I will be using an html string, should I put the quoted text where the get_file_contents function is located in that script?

HoLyVieR Over a year ago

@Bob See my edit for how you can load up your data as a string into both XMLReader and DOMDocument.

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