Question

regex for html tag

Asked by: ray-solomon

I am trying to create a regex for a specific string in an html document.

Example string:
<li class="last"><a href="/nationwide/name_search/make-money?page=2">Last</a></li>

The only thing in the string that is going to change is "make-money" keyword and the page number.
Everything else can be hard-coded.

Here is my attempt:
<li class=\"last\"><a href=\"\/nationwide\/name_search\/([a-zA-Z-])?page=([\d]+)\">Last</a></li>

Could someone please correct this regex:

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Asked On
2008-09-22 at 20:04:14ID23753754
Topics

PHP Scripting Language

,

Regular Expressions

Participating Experts
4
Points
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Comments
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Answers

 

by: margajet24Posted on 2008-09-22 at 20:55:37ID: 22546309

i replace space characters with \s
 and also added '+' in [a-zA-Z-]

please try this..

<li\sclass=\"last\"><a\shref=\"\/nationwide\/name_search\/([a-zA-Z-]+)\?page=([\d]+)\">Last</a></li>

                                              
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by: ray-solomonPosted on 2008-09-22 at 21:19:18ID: 22546394

I tried, but it is not finding a match.

Here is the example code:

$html = '<li class="last"><a href="/nationwide/name_search/make-money?page=2">Last</a></li>';
	
if (preg_match('/<li\sclass=\"last\"><a\shref=\"\/nationwide\/name_search\/([a-zA-Z-]+)\?page=([\d]+)\">Last</a></li>/', $html, $match))
{
    print_r($match);
}

                                              
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by: HardiPosted on 2008-09-22 at 21:33:18ID: 22546439

You didn't escape the slash in </a> and </li>?

 

by: margajet24Posted on 2008-09-22 at 21:40:40ID: 22546467

im sorry..i didnt try this in php..i just used regex..i was able to match 2 strings from the input string

 

by: ray-solomonPosted on 2008-09-22 at 21:41:17ID: 22546469

I escaped it, but it still does not work.

 

by: be1Posted on 2008-09-22 at 21:53:15ID: 22546519

the solution in posic regular expression is as follows:

<li class="last"><a href="/nationwide/name_search/\([-a-zA-Z]\+\)?page=\([0-9]\+\)">Last</a></li>

                                              
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by: be1Posted on 2008-09-22 at 21:58:17ID: 22546536

well i mean, in a more general form, adding ^.* at the beginning and .*$ at the end, i get the right result with the sed regex parser :

echo '<li class="last"><a href="/nationwide/name_search/make-money?page=2">Last</a></li>' | sed --posix 's#^.*name_search/\([-a-zA-Z]\+\)?page=\([0-9]\+\).*$#Got """\1""" and """\2"""#'
Got """make-money""" and """2"""
                                              
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by: ghostdog74Posted on 2008-09-22 at 23:52:48ID: 22546933

use PHP's string manipulation functions instead. Easier to craft than regular expression, an example

<?php
    $string = '<li class="last"><a href="/nationwide/name_search/make-money?page=2">Last</a></li>';
    $pos1=strpos($string,"name_search/") + strlen("name_search/");
    $pos2=strpos($string,"\">Last");
    $getit = substr( $string,$pos1,$pos2-$pos1);
    $splitted = explode("?",$getit);
    foreach ( $splitted as $value){
        echo $value . "\n";
    }
?>
                                              
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by: ray-solomonPosted on 2008-09-23 at 02:57:18ID: 31499127

That works perfectly and is exactly how I needed it.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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