regular expression help..

penny336

hi all,

i seldomly touch regular expression,

suppose i have a table in html which i have extracted using explode function

<table border="1" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0">
<tr><td><center>NO.</center></td>
<td><center>DATE</center></td>
<td><center>TIME</center></td>
<td><center>EVENT CATEGORY</center></td>
</tr>
<tr><td><center>1</center></td>
<td><center>2005/03/26</center></td>
<td><center>16:52:16.083</center></td>
<td><a href="EV_DISP.HTM?238,17,0,0" TARGET="_top">STOP</a> </td></tr>
...
...
</table>

is it possible to use regular expression in php to grab the value between <center></center> except the first row and store the value into an array?? e.g array(array('1','2005/03/26','16:52:16.083','url'),array(....))

and there is exception in the final column which is a hyperlink.

show me directions or share the code will be appreciate.

😕

Drakla

Well as the first three start with digits they can be easily captured with preg_match_all using the pattern:

<center>(\d.*)</center>Us

And as long as there's on ever ONE url in your grabbed data that can be had with

Pattern: href="(.*)"Usi

I always use single quotes around patterns so that you don't have to escape backslashes.

penny336

hi Drakla

thx ur help

may i know how to do the iteration part.

because the pattern is repeat,

<tr><td><center>1</center></td>
<td><center>2005/03/26</center></td>
<td><center>16:52:16.083</center></td>
...

do i need to use for-loop to grab the 1 and then jump to next tag

to grab the date ........:rolleyes:

or what's the common method use in regular expression to perform iteration loop or not neccessary?

mrhappiness

why not doing something like this

//the text
$text = '<tr><td><center>NO.</center></td>
<td><center>DATE</center></td>
<td><center>TIME</center></td>
<td><center>EVENT CATEGORY</center></td>
</tr>
<tr><td><center>1</center></td>
<td><center>2005/03/26</center></td>
<td><center>16:52:16.083</center></td>
<td><a href="EV_DISP.HTM?238,17,0,0" TARGET="_top">STOP</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><center>2</center></td>
<td><center>2005/04/19</center></td>
<td><center>07:59:50.789</center></td>
<td><a href="EV_DISP.HTM?239,17,0,0" TARGET="_top">RESTART</a></td></tr>';

//the pattern to grab the table rows
$pattern_1 = '%\\<tr\\>(.*)\\</tr\\>%siU';

//the pattern to grab the table cells
//matches anything between tags which are
//between a td-tag
$pattern_2 = '%\\<td\\>\\<.*\\>(.*)\\<.*\\>\\</td\\>%siU';

//grab table rows
preg_match_all($pattern_1, $text, $matches);
$matches = $matches[1];
//remove first element
array_shift($matches);

foreach ($matches as $key => $match) {
    //grab table cell content
    preg_match_all($pattern_2, $match, $match);
    $matches[$key] = $match[1];
}

//output result
echo '<pre>';
print_r($matches);
echo '</pre>';

penny336

hi mrhappiness,

thx ur code

but the result just grab 3 elements in each row.
e.g.

...
[98] => Array
(
[0] => 99
[1] => 2005/03/26
[2] => 16:06:48.728
)
...

how to grab the url tag(at the last column) too??

need modified pattern_2??
really appreciate ur help regular expression is very powerful.

mrhappiness

my code outputs

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => 1
            [1] => 2005/03/26
            [2] => 16:52:16.083
            [3] => STOP
        )

[1] => Array
    (
        [0] => 2
        [1] => 2005/04/19
        [2] => 07:59:50.789
        [3] => RESTART
    )

)

i grab the link title as well and therefor can't reproduce your problem 😕

penny336

oh.. i know what happened

<tr><td><center>3</center></td><td><center>2005/03/26</center></td><td><center>16:40:23.136</center></td><td><a href="EV_DISP.HTM?236,6,2,0" TARGET="_top">I peak+</a> CH1 IN</td></tr>

there is space at last column e.g. "...I peak+</a>"

the pattern_2 regular expression seem can't handle the space between text.

and can it grab the url after href too??

such as.
3] => Array
(
[0] => 4
[1] => 2005/03/26
[2] => 16:40:22.936
[3] => EV_DISP.HTM?236,6,2,0
[4] => I peak+

really thx ur help, regular expression is powerful

penny336

hi all,

anyone can tell me that
why the follow regular expression doesn't work in words with space??

e.g.

<tr><td><center>3</center></td><td><center>2005/03/26</center></td><td><center>16:40:23.136</center></td><td><a href="EV_DISP.HTM?236,6,2,0" TARGET="_top">I peak+</a> CH1 IN</td></tr>

//the pattern to grab the table cells
//matches anything between tags which are
//between a td-tag
$pattern_2 = '%<td><.>(.)<.*></td>%siU';

it can't grab the word I peak+ which has space in between I and peak+