PHP/regex: How to get the string value of HTML tag?

Question

I need help on regex or preg_match because I am not that experienced yet with regards to those so here is my problem.

I need to get the value "get me" but I think my function has an error. The number of html tags are dynamic. It can contain many nested html tag like a bold tag. Also, the "get me" value is dynamic.

<?php
function getTextBetweenTags($string, $tagname) {
    $pattern = "/<$tagname>(.*?)<\/$tagname>/";
    preg_match($pattern, $string, $matches);
    return $matches[1];
}

$str = '<textformat leading="2"><p align="left"><font size="10">get me</font></p></textformat>';
$txt = getTextBetweenTags($str, "font");
echo $txt;
?>

possible duplicate of Can you provide some examples of why it is hard to parse XML and HTML with a regex? — Brad Mace
– Brad Mace, Commented Jul 9, 2011 at 20:53
possible duplicate of RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags — Paŭlo Ebermann
– Paŭlo Ebermann, Commented Sep 15, 2011 at 14:17

takete.dk · Accepted Answer · 2009-05-06 09:58:42Z

73

<?php
function getTextBetweenTags($string, $tagname) {
    $pattern = "/<$tagname ?.*>(.*)<\/$tagname>/";
    preg_match($pattern, $string, $matches);
    return $matches[1];
}

$str = '<textformat leading="2"><p align="left"><font size="10">get me</font></p></textformat>';
$txt = getTextBetweenTags($str, "font");
echo $txt;
?>

That should do the trick

answered May 6, 2009 at 9:58

takete.dk

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3 Comments

Samir Talwar Over a year ago

The opening tag should be matched using <$tagname.*?> or <$tagname[^>]*>, not <$tagname ?.*>. As it is, it's greedy and will match a lot further than you hoped if there's more than one closing tag in the string.

Gumbo Over a year ago

Note that attribute values may contain a plain >.

teynon Over a year ago

This only works if there is only one tag of type $tagname on the same line. If there are multiple tags, it will grab the start to end of them both. This also won't work if the tag is spread across multiple lines.

pkwebmarket · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-21 21:39:02Z

17

Try this

$str = '<option value="123">abc</option>
        <option value="123">aabbcc</option>';

preg_match_all("#<option.*?>([^<]+)</option>#", $str, $foo);

print_r($foo[1]);

answered Jan 21, 2012 at 21:39

pkwebmarket

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1 Comment

pkwebmarket Over a year ago

yes i know but the previous answer is not 100% working correctly.yesterday i have the same issue and i try the previous answer but they show only one tag value not going to the next tag.I have correct this error and submit correct answer for new users.

Tomas Aschan · Accepted Answer · 2009-05-06 09:58:44Z

8

In your pattern, you simply want to match all text between the two tags. Thus, you could use for example a [\w\W] to match all characters.

function getTextBetweenTags($string, $tagname) {
    $pattern = "/<$tagname>([\w\W]*?)<\/$tagname>/";
    preg_match($pattern, $string, $matches);
    return $matches[1];
}

answered May 6, 2009 at 9:58

Tomas Aschan

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Comments

Gumbo · Accepted Answer · 2009-09-22 05:36:17Z

3

Since attribute values may contain a plain > character, try this regular expression:

$pattern = '/<'.preg_quote($tagname, '/').'(?:[^"'>]*|"[^"]*"|\'[^\']*\')*>(.*?)<\/'.preg_quote($tagname, '/').'>/s';

But regular expressions are not suitable for parsing non-regular languages like HTML. You should better use a parser like SimpleXML or DOMDocument.

answered Sep 22, 2009 at 5:36

Gumbo

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Comments

lawrence Da · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-08 00:33:01Z

1

this might be old but my answer might help someone

You can simply use

$str = '<textformat leading="2"><p align="left"><font size="10">get me</font></p></textformat>';
echo strip_tags($str);

https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.strip-tags.php

answered Jun 8, 2020 at 0:33

lawrence Da

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Comments

Xman Classical · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-11 02:47:16Z

0

$userinput = "http://www.example.vn/";
//$url = urlencode($userinput);
$input = @file_get_contents($userinput) or die("Could not access file: $userinput");
$regexp = "<tagname\s[^>]*>(.*)<\/tagname>";
//==Example:
//$regexp = "<div\s[^>]*>(.*)<\/div>";

if(preg_match_all("/$regexp/siU", $input, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER)) {
    foreach($matches as $match) {
        // $match[2] = link address 
        // $match[3] = link text
    }
}

answered Jan 11, 2013 at 2:47

Xman Classical

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Comments

Darren Li · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-06 21:22:07Z

0

try $pattern = "<($tagname)\b.*?>(.*?)</\1>" and return $matches[2]

answered Aug 6, 2015 at 21:22

Darren Li

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1 Comment

Maximillian Laumeister Over a year ago

Thank you for posting an answer to this question! Code-only answers are discouraged on Stack Overflow, because a code dump with no context doesn't explain how or why the solution will work, making it difficult for the original poster (or any future readers) to understand the logic behind it. Please, edit your question and include an explanation of your code so that others can benefit from your answer. Thanks!

Dharman · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-08 00:41:01Z

0

The following php snippets would return the text between html tags/elements.

regex : "/tagname(.*)endtag/" will return text between tags.

i.e.

$regex="/[start_tag_name](.*)[/end_tag_name]/";
$content="[start_tag_name]SOME TEXT[/end_tag_name]";
preg_replace($regex,$content);

It will return "SOME TEXT".

edited Jun 8, 2020 at 0:41

Dharman♦

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answered Jul 3, 2009 at 14:59

Letsnurture

Comments

vaibhav kulkarni · Accepted Answer · 2021-01-28 10:28:06Z

0

Your HTML

$html='<ul id="main">
    <li>
        <h1><a href="[link]">My Title</a></h1>
        <span class="date">Date</span>
        <div class="section">
            [content]
        </div>
    </li>
</ul>';

//function call you can change the tag name

echo contentBetweenTags($html,"span");

// this function will help you to fetch the data from a specific tag

function contentBetweenTags($content, $tagname){
    $pattern = "#<\s*?$tagname\b[^>]*>(.*?)</$tagname\b[^>]*>#s";
    preg_match($pattern, $content, $matches);
    
    if(empty($matches))
        return;
    
    $str = "<$tagname>".html_entity_decode($matches[1])."</$tagname>";
    return $str;
}

answered Jan 28, 2021 at 10:28

vaibhav kulkarni

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