Regex for html parsing in php

Question

Possible Duplicate:
RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags

Hello,

i m stuck in weird regex problem, i m parsing some html table in php

regex i m using : <td[^>]*>(h.*?)</td>

<td>other data</td> <td>other data</td><td>Data_needed</td> <td>--</td>

but its matching all other data too

now i want to match it to <td>Data_needed</td> <td>--</td>

i tried some regex's which gives ouput like

other data</td> <td>other data</td><td>Data_needed</td> <td>--

starting from first <td> to last </td>

but i want Data_needed from <td>Data_needed</td> <td>--</td>

thanks for any help

Answer 1

Do not use regex for parsing HTML or XML (including XHTML). Ever.

Use an HTML or XML parser instead. A quick search for "php html parsing" turned up this tool, Simple HTML DOM, as the first hit. PHP also has DOM and SAX tools built in.

Answer 2

You can use the Simple HTML DOM for that instead.

A HTML DOM parser written in PHP5+ let you manipulate HTML in a very easy way!

Answer 3

general html parsing shouldn't be done using regex, but if your HTML is simple and not nested you can try

.*<td[^>]*>(.*?)</td>\s*<td>--</td>