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Answer 1

+4 A:

Use PHP DOM to parse HTML instead of regex.

For example in your case (code updated to show HTML):

$doc = new DOMDocument();
@$doc->loadHTML(file_get_contents("http://sf.backpage.com/MusicInstruction/"));
$nodes = $doc->getElementsByTagName('div');

for ($i = 0; $i < $nodes->length; $i ++)
{
    $x = $nodes->item($i);

    if($x->getAttribute('class') == 'cat');
        echo htmlspecialchars($x->nodeValue) . "<hr/>"; //this is the element that you want
}

shamittomar 2010-09-06 12:11:24

Thanks for the advice, will try.

Henry 2010-09-06 12:17:18

Answer 2

+2 A:

The reason your regex fails is that you are expecting . to match newlines, and it won't unless you use the s modifier, so try

$pattern = "/<div class=\"cat\">(.*)<\/div>/s";

When you do this, you might find the pattern a little too greedy as it will try to capture everything up to the last closing div element. To make it non-greedy, and just match up the very next closing div, add a ? after the *

$pattern = "/<div class=\"cat\">(.*?)<\/div>/s";

This just serves to illustrate that for all but the simplest cases, parsing HTML with regexes is the road to madness. So try using DOM functions for parsing HTML.

Paul Dixon 2010-09-06 12:18:41

I'm new to PHP, and in middle of work with regex now. This answer help me solve the problem so I'll pick it. Though I'll try DOM for future tasks. Thank you all.

Henry 2010-09-06 15:17:48

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