getting all instances of text from a string

[jpr]

Hey, i have a stirng called $data. Contained in the string data is a lot of text, with multiple randomly placed links. Can someone please show me how to code a function that I can call that will take the string $data and return an array of all the links it finds in the string. I thought about determining whats a link by things that start with '<a' and end with '>'. Thanks!

[pyro]

Regex to the rescue... 😃

<?PHP
$str = "This is a test string with a <a href=\"#\">link</a>...Heck, it even has <a href=\"#\">another link</a>.";
preg_match_all("/(<a(?:.*?)<\\/a>)/i", $str, $matches);
$links = $matches[1]; #$links is an array of all the links.
?>

[jpr]

I tried to test your code, by add the following lines, it sayd there were 0 links in the string.

<?PHP
$str = "This is a test string with a <a href=\"#\">link</a>...Heck, it even has <a href=\"#\">another link</a>.";
preg_match_all("/(<a(?:.*?)<\/a> )/i", $str, $matches);
$links = $matches[1]; #$links is an array of all the links.

echo "# of links: " . count($links) . "<br>\n";
echo "Link: " . $links[0] . "<br>\n";
echo "Link: " . $links[1] . "<br>\n";
?>

[pyro]

Seems the forums try to add a space to my regex. Delete the space after the <\/a>

[jpr]

Your code is working great, however in a way I asked for the wrong thing. Really what I need is the actual address (the http://www.kjdsf.com part). Is it easy to make this change? Thanks!

[pyro]

Hehe... gave that to someone 20 mins after I gave you the original solution to this problem: http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10259998#post10443507

😃