Regex matching table rows in HTML [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Best methods to parse HTML with PHP

I'm having a bit of trouble matching table rows with preg. Here is my expression:

<TR[a-z\=\"a-z0-9 ]*>([\{\}\(\)\^\=\$\&\.\_\%\#\!\@\=\<\>\:\;\,\~\`\'\*\?\/\+\|\[\]\|\-a-zA-Z0-9À-ÿ\n\r ]*)<\/TR>

As you can see, it tries to mach everything in-between TR tags (including all symbols.) That part works great, however when dealing with multiple table rows, it often takes multiple table rows as ONE match, rather than a match for each table row:

<TR>
 <TD>test</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
 <TD>test2</TD>
</TR>

yields:

Array
    (
        [0] => <TD>test</TD>
               <TD>test2</TD>
    )

rather than what I want it to:

Array
    (
        [0] => <TD>test</TD>
        [1] => <TD>test2</TD>
    )

I realize that the reason for this is because it's match the symbols, and the search naturally takes the rest of the rows until it hits the last one.

So basically, I'm wondering if someone can help me add to the expression so that it will exclude anything with "TR" in between the TR tags, as to prevent it from matching multiple rows.

Use the PHP DOM to do this, not regex. Using regex to parse HTML is generally considered a bad idea. A (somewhat entertaining) take on it: stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/… — Jared Farrish
– Jared Farrish, Commented Sep 2, 2011 at 21:04
Do you have an option to use a PHP HTML Parser instead of regex? — Chandu
– Chandu, Commented Sep 2, 2011 at 21:04
Instead of manual anyting: there are readymade html table extraction libraries for php. — mario
– mario, Commented Sep 2, 2011 at 21:09
It doesn't answer your question, but don't do this: [\{\}\^\=\$\&\.\_\%\#\!\@\=\<\>\:\;\,\~\`\'\*\?\/\+\|\[\]\|\-a-zA-Z0-9À-ÿ\n\r ] Because it's a horrible mess and you don't need to put backslashes before almost all of those. You only need escape: [ and ] and \ and - (when not first/last) and ^ (when first). Here's a much easier to read version. [{}()^=$&._%#!@<>:;,~`'*?/+\[\]|\-a-zA-Z0-9À-ÿ\n\r ] — Peter Boughton
– Peter Boughton, Commented Sep 4, 2011 at 21:52

Bennett McElwee · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-31 12:08:31Z

4

Use lazy matching in your regex: <tr.*?</tr>

But as others have mentioned, it's more robust to use a proper parser if you can.

edited Aug 31, 2013 at 12:08

answered Sep 4, 2011 at 21:45

Bennett McElwee

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1 Comment

Ravi Soni Over a year ago

I have tried simple html parser and ganon but both failed on broken HTML which i have got to parse.

Kakashi · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-02 21:11:06Z

2

Try using global search:

preg_match_all("/<td>([^<]+)/", $html, $matches);

answered Sep 2, 2011 at 21:11

Kakashi

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2 Comments

user925996 Over a year ago

That almost works, however I need everything in between the <tr> tags, not just individual items from the td tags. Instead of just excluding the "<" from the "[^<]" in your expression, would it somehow be possible to exclude the string "TR" or even "<TR>"?

Kakashi Over a year ago

try setting the sim flags and replace td by tr in regex: /<tr>([<]+)/sim

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