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Get last <li> element from a string

Answer 1

+6 A:

HTML is not regular, and so can't be parsed with a regular expression. Use a proper HTML parser.

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams 2010-01-20 10:44:07

This is the right approach. Saves a lot of pain.

Max 2010-01-20 10:49:42

cool tip. thanks!

JoaoPedro 2010-01-20 10:55:03

Answer 2

A:

From the PHP.net documentation:

If matches is provided, then it is filled with the results of search. $matches[0] will contain the text that matched the full pattern, $matches[1] will have the text that matched the first captured parenthesized subpattern, and so on.

$matches[0] is the complete match (not just the captured bits)

Powertieke 2010-01-20 10:45:44

Answer 3

A:

You have to extract the second index because you have 2 capturing groupds:

$matches[0]; // Contains your original string
$matches[1]; // Contains the argument for the LI start-tag (.*?)
$matches[2]; // Contains the string contained by the LI tags (.*)

'parsing' (x)html strings is with regular expressions is hard and can be full of unexpected problems. parsing more than simple tagged strings is not possible because (x)html is not a regular language.

you could improve your regex by using (not tested):

 /#<li([^>]*)>(.+?)</li>#ims/

Jacco 2010-01-20 10:46:33

that explains the weird result. Didnt quite understand the php documentation for it.But ill use the html parser since this is something ill need to use a few times. Thanks.

JoaoPedro 2010-01-20 10:56:59

Answer 4

A:

strrpos — Find position of last occurrence of a char in a string

Zanthrax 2010-01-20 10:56:56

Answer 5

A:

@OP, your requirement looks simple, so no need for parsers or regex.

$markup = "<body><div><li id='first'>One</li><li id='second'>Two</li><li id='third'>Three</li></div></body>";
$s = explode("</li>",$markup,-1);
$t = explode(">",end($s));
print end($t);

output

$ php test.php
Three

ghostdog74 2010-01-20 11:20:45

Answer 6

+1 A:

If you already know how to use jQuery, you could also take a look at phpQuery. It's a PHP library that allows you to easily access dom elements, just like in jQuery.

Fred 2010-01-20 11:22:44

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Get last <li> element from a string

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