Matching Then Replacing This

jadedwest

Hi everyone, first time I've used these forums.

Don't be too harsh on me.

Okay, I need to preg_match the info between the title tags.

But then, I need it to replace everything after the Name with nothing.
So it only catches the Name, as if it were <title>Name</title>.

The whole format I posted above is how it is on the HTML I need to match from.

Then I need it to be outputted to a variable that I can insert into my database.

I've only been doing PHP for 2 months now.. I'm not that far into it.
So any help would be appreciated.

~jaded

nrg_alpha

So perhaps something like this?

$html = <<<EOD
<title>Name (Full Name) | Site.com</title>
EOD;

preg_match('#<title>\s*([^\s]+).+?</title>#i', $html, $match);
echo $match[1]; // Name

So $match[1] is what the Name is stored in... Obvisouly replace the $html variable with the file you are checking.. that was just an example to get the point across.

jadedwest

Thanks so much,
it does what I need it to do. 🙂

I'm decent with everything else,
it's just those characters between the tags..
\s*([^\s]+).+?
I'm going to read up on those.

Thanks again.

nrg_alpha

jadedwest;10920594 wrote:
Thanks so much,
it's just those characters between the tags..
\s*([^\s]+).+?
I'm going to read up on those.

To be brief:

\s is a short hand character class for any white space character (this includes tabs, or a literal space, or carriage return or newline.. that sort of thing)
* is a zero or more times quantifier
([^\s]+) the parenthesis means it will 'capture' what is inside... so inside we have [^\s]+ means anything that is NOT a whitespace character, one or more times (noted by the plus sign quantifier).
.+? the dot is a wild card that matches any single character except a newline.. so this will match any single character (that is not a newline) one or more times, but lazily.. (look up lazy vs greedy quantifiers when you look this stuff up 😉 )

While I may not be the best at explaining things, you can have a look at these resources to help you out:

http://www.regular-expressions.info/
http://weblogtoolscollection.com/regex/regex.php

And if you really want to get on the regex ball, you can pick this book up (often hailed as the authoritive regex 'bible', and rightfully so)!

EDIT - Welcome to PHP Builder.. please flag this thread as 'resolved'.
(Top menu: Thread Tools > Mark Thread Resolved)