Using regex with XML

Question

I'm trying to use regular expressions to extract the CDATA from the following XML feed: http://www.patrickarundell.net/THREE-IE-FEED.asp

My code is as follows:

$xml = file_get_contents('http://www.patrickarundell.net/THREE-IE-FEED.asp');

$arr = array();
preg_match('/(CDATA)(.*)/', $xml, $arr);
echo '<pre>';
    print_r($arr);
echo '</pre>';

The output is:

Array
(
    [0] => CDATA[
    [1] => CDATA
    [2] => [
)

I know I don't have the regular expression quite right, but when I try the following statement:

preg_match('/(<![CDATA[)(.*)/', $xml, $arr);

I get an error:

Warning: preg_match() [function.preg-match]: Compilation failed: missing terminating ] for character class at offset 15

I thought this might give me the details after the square bracket '[', which is what I'm looking for.

Any help appreciated, I've been trying this for a few hours and having no luck.

Yes, I'm using SimpleXMLElement to parse the rest of the file and that works fine. Its doesn't give me any problems. But I can't get the details in the CDATA part using SimpleXMLElement. If you see the XML file the actual horoscope detail is under the <horoscope> node. When I reference this node, it lumps all the data in together. — Stephen
– Stephen, Commented Apr 27, 2011 at 23:01

stema · Accepted Answer · 2011-04-28 08:13:22Z

3

The reason for the error message is that it is missing a closing ] for a character class. But you didn't want to define a character class with your [ you want to match it, so you nedd to escape it \[.

<!\[(CDATA)\[\s*(.*?)\s*\]\]>

I tested it here on regexr

The .*? is a non greedy match, it matches as less as possible, until it finds the closing ]]>.

answered Apr 28, 2011 at 8:13

stema

93.5k20 gold badges110 silver badges138 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

Stephen Over a year ago

stema, thanks for this. just one question, I managed to get the first CDATA value into the array. But as you can see from the XML there are a number of other CDATA segments. how do I manage these ?

stema Over a year ago

@Stephen, I don't know php very well, but there is a function preg_match_all, try using this instead of preg_match. According to this documentation it should do what you want.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Using regex with XML

1 Answer 1

2 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

2 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related