I have a script that returns the following in a variable called $content
<body>
<p><span class=\"c-sc\">dgdfgdf</span></p>
</body>
I however need to place everything between the body tag inside an array called matches
I do the following to match the stuff between the body tag
preg_match('/<body>(.*)<\/body>/',$content,$matches);
but the $mathces array is empty, how could I get it to return everything inside the body tag
You should not use regular expressions to parse HTML.
Your particular problem in this case is you need to add the DOTALL modifier so that the dot matches newlines.
preg_match('/<body>(.*)<\/body>/s', $content, $matches);
But seriously, use an HTML parser instead. There are so many ways that the above regular expression can break.
Don't try to process html with regular expressions! Use PHP's builtin parser instead:
$dom = new DOMDocument;
$dom->loadHTML($string);
$bodies = $dom->getElementsByTagName('body');
assert($bodies->length === 1);
$body = $bodies->item(0);
for ($i = 0; $i < $body->children->length; $i++) {
$body->remove($body->children->item($i));
}
$string = $dom->saveHTML();
If for some reason you don't have DOMDocument installed, try this
Step 1. Download simple_html_dom
Step 2. Read the documentation about how to use its selectors
require_once("simple_html_dom.php");
$doc = new simple_html_dom();
$doc->load($someHtmlString);
$body = $doc->find("body")->innertext;