regex for parsing xml string with multiple text block

Question

I'm not very good in regex... so if somebody could help me with this one (maybe trivial)

[update] First i'm not looking for the best way of manipulating xml (SimpleXMLElement,DOM etc... is fine). I'm just looking for this regex out of the context off XML.

i have xml like that

<myxml>
<node>21</node> som text with <entite>some</entite> other <b>nodes</b>
<node>22</node> some text
</myxml>

I would like to extract <node> with all other entite and text block until next <node> result could be like :

Array {
 [0] = "<node>21</node> som text with <entite>some</entite> other <b>nodes</b>",
 [1] = "<node>22</node> some text"
}

I don't want to use DOMElement for parsing the XML, so i realy looking for regex.

thanks if you have an idea.

Answer 1

Please don't use regexes to parse XML. That's what XML parsers are for.

PHP has many built right in. Try the DOM or SimpleXML on for size. Given your requirement of picking up text nodes between two sibling tags, you might also consider working with XMLReader, it may well be easier for you to work with for this specific task.

Answer 2

Use splitting to chunk this down:

<?php

$str = <<<EOT
<myxml>
<node>21</node> som text with <entite>some</entite> other <b>nodes</b>
<node>22</node> some text
</myxml>
EOT;

$res = array_slice( preg_split( "~(?=<node(?:[^>]|\".*?\"|'.*?')*>|</myxml>)~", $str ), 1, -1 );
print_r( $res );

Breakdown of the expression:

(?=           # match before
  <node       # "<node"
  (?:         # match and don't capture this group
    [^>]        # match non ">"
    |           # OR
    \".*?\"     # match '"' and anything (don't be greedy) until the next '"'
    |           # OR
    '.*?'       # match "'" and anything (don't be greedy) until the next "'"
  )*          # ... as often as you like
  >           # ">"
  |           # OR
  </myxml>    # "</myxml>"
)             # 

You can throw out the ([^>]|\".*?\"|'.*?')* part if you are sure that <node> never has any attributes.

_{Mandatory disclaimer: Please don't do this. Parsing XML with regexp is a really bad idea!}