Regular expression pattern help

reddymade

I am trying to do the screen scraping on a website, i have the following div tag which has the data, which i would like to scrape.
I am using the pattern which is below, but it seems to have a problem, can you please help, it is not showing any data.

<div id="subtext" style="padding-top: 8px;">
<span style="line-height:18pt;">
	<strong>Frank Sanchez</strong><br>
</span>
12345 SW 21st Street<br>
Miromar, FL  33321-4286<br>
(914) 213-1234<br>
<a href="/10668/track/10126/search/FindNeighbors?search_id=10311351887581679174&amp;element_id=0">Find Neighbors</a>
<br>
</div>

I am using the following pattern and it seems there is something wrong in it. i do not see it is picking up any data between those tags:

$pattern = "@<div id=\"subtext\".*>.*<strong>([a-zA-Z ]*)</strong>.*</span>([a-zA-Z0-9 ]*)<br>([a-zA-Z0-9, -]*)<br>([a-zA-Z0-9\(\) -]*)<br>@si";

Thank you very much for the information

madwormer2

This one worked for me:

<div id=\"subtext\".?strong>([a-zA-Z0-9 ]?) \s\s([a-zA-Z0-9 ]?) \s([a-zA-Z0-9 ,-]?) \s([0-9 ,()-]*?)

For some reason the whitespace was being a bitch, so I added the \s* which finds 0 or more whitespace. (Including carriage returns)

xblue

I see at least one problem here: [a-zA-Z0-9 ] would not match the line break the ending span tag is followed by, and similar is likely to happen with the part for the following 2 lines.

Using \s (for whitespace in general) instead of the space should get you around this.

If this is not the only problem, I recommend to cut down the pattern radically, see if that rest matches as expected, and slowly add on to this again to see where it fails.

reddymade

content removed

reddymade

madwormer2 wrote:
This one worked for me:

madwormer2 wrote:
This one worked for me:

Please i am trying crazy on net to find the regex pattern: I am using the following but it does'nt work. it just bringing the empty values under array.

$pattern = "@<div id=\"subtext\".>.([a-zA-Z ]?) \s\s([a-zA-Z0-9 ]?) \s([a-zA-Z0-9, -]?) \s([a-zA-Z0-9() -]*?) @si";

All i am trying to get is the name which is Juan Cruz by removing * which is between juan and cruz and thne in the next cells the address and phone number.

<div id="subtext" style="padding-top: 8px;">
Juan
*Cruz 1584 SW 21st St Miramar, FL 33015-4286 (954) 123-4567 <a href="/10668/track/10126/search/FindNeighbors?search_id=30051320438651254659&element_id=0">Find Neighbors</a> Save/Customize Listing in: <a href="http://www.whitepages.com/10815/log_feature/save_personal/myinfo/set_origin/add_contact/update_contact?ufsr=1&lname=Bekkary&fname=Rajender&h_street=15844%20SW%2021st%20St&h_city=Miramar&h_state=FL&h_zip=33027&h_country=US&h_pri_phone=(954)%20438-2163" onclick="javascript:Bounce('411');">My AddressBook</a> or
<a href="http://www.whitepages.com/10815/log_feature/vcard/search/vcard/Rajender_Bekkary.vcf?search_id=30051320438651254659&lower=1" onclick="javascript:Bounce('411');">Outlook</a> <a href="/10668/map_provider?full_address=15844%20SW%2021st%20St&city=Miramar&state=FL&zip=33027&country=US&lat=25.989338&long=-80.359200">Map this location</a> <a href="/10668/maps/FL?npa=954" title="Area code map">Area Code Map</a> <a href="/10668/log_feature/email_to_friend/tell_others/listing?name=Bekkary&firstname=Rajender&full_address=15844%20SW%2021st%20St&city=Miramar&state=FL&zip=33027&country=US&full_phone=(954)%20438-2163">E-mail Listing to Friends</a> 
Local Time:
10:14 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time 
</div>

Thank you very much.

madwormer2

If you're building it yourself, and you are running on windows, I suggest you use the regex coach. It's a free download, and helps you to edit and try regex in almost real time.

Google it.