ansaurus

Question

How do I search for and replace a specific area of content in a HTML document using preg_replace

Answer 1

+2 A:

Do NOT use regular expressons for this, look into parsers. For instance, load the HTML in a DOMDocument instance, search the table with either DOMXPath or getElementsByTagName, and use the replaceNode or other manipulation functions. Doing it with regexes is usually very unreliable.

Wrikken 2010-07-24 13:00:45

I need to do this server side unfortunately but thanks for the suggestion. :)

Nathan Pitman 2010-07-24 14:05:47

Parsing XML server side is what the XML functions of PHP are for.

Kwebble 2010-07-24 14:12:59

Wow, ok... I didn't even realise this was possible.. sorry, I just assumed you had misunderstood my question. Will definitely have a look for a primer on native DOM manipulation with PHP. Thanks. :)

Nathan Pitman 2010-07-24 14:24:32

@Wrikken: ok, well I found a solution while in part uses the techniques you;ve suggested so thanks very much for that.As I have a large HTML string as a PHP variable it was easier to find the table in question using the DOM method you suggested, replace it with a placeholder node and then str_replace the placeholder node with the string contents. :)Thanks again!

Nathan Pitman 2010-07-24 20:54:04

Answer 2

A:

Is the HTML document your own, or file_get_contents()ed from a another site? If the first, just change the HTML to

<html>
 ...
<table>
    <?php echo $tableString ?>
</table>
 ...
</html>

and give it a .php or .inc extension. Then, in your main file:

<?php
    $tableString = calcTableContents();
    require('includedHTML.inc');
?>

No point parsing HTML if you don't have to.

Eric 2010-07-24 13:07:58

That is an interesting interpretation of the question.

Gordon 2010-07-24 13:09:09

Often the asker of the question knows what they want, but follow the wrong route to get it.

Eric 2010-07-24 13:15:28

Unfortunately I can't effect the HTML in any way before it's available to me as a string in PHP. In retrospect I now realise my original question lacked context so apologies for that. :)

Nathan Pitman 2010-07-24 14:10:08

ansaurus

tags:

views:

answers:

How do I search for and replace a specific area of content in a HTML document using preg_replace

related questions