Find and extract Matched values from String in PHP

Question

I have a text like below

$str = '<div>
           <div id="priceRangeWrapper">
              <div id="priceSlider" min="0" max="0"></div>
           </div>
        </div>';

1) First I want to get the position of <div id="priceSlider" min="0" max="0"></div> from above string where min and max values are random. Something like with strpos() function of Php in which it returns the position in terms of int like

 $pos = strpos($str, '<div id="priceSlider" min="0" max="0"></div>');
 //but min and max values are random. I don't know what can be they

2) I want to get min and max values from above text. How can I get these two values with/without regex in PHP?

I once heard it is over killing for such task as compared to regex. But I havn't tried yet. Let me check. And is it right that's over killing than regex searching? — Abdul Jabbar
– Abdul Jabbar, Commented Dec 18, 2015 at 18:02
@AbdulJabbarWebBestow You will get varying opinions on whether or not its overkill, so take opinions with a grain of salt. The benefit to properly parsing HTML is that you have a well-defined interface to access the data, which has better error correction and handling of the input (since it has a better understanding of HTML than any regex you craft will). These characteristics make it more maintainable and explicit as to your intentions, which is why I will always prefer to use DOMDocument in these situations than a regex. — nickb
– nickb, Commented Dec 18, 2015 at 18:09
@nickb just out of curiosity, wondering if DOMDocument is using regex on backend to find Paths and Attributes etc? I mean to say that how it would be searching for elements and their attribute etc without using regex? — Abdul Jabbar
– Abdul Jabbar, Commented Dec 18, 2015 at 18:10

nickb · Accepted Answer · 2015-12-18 18:04:25Z

5

Don't use a regex to parse HTML. Instead, here's an example with DOMDocument.

$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc->loadHTML($str); // Load the HTML string from your post

$xpath = new DOMXPath($doc);
$node = $xpath->query('//div[@id="priceSlider"]')->item(0); // Get the <div>

// Print out the min and max attribute values
echo $node->getAttribute('min') . " " . $node->getAttribute('max');

You can see it working here.

answered Dec 18, 2015 at 18:04

nickb

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5 Comments

Abdul Jabbar Over a year ago

just out of curiosity, wondering if it is using regex on backend to find Paths and Attributes etc? I mean to say that how it would be searching for elements and their attribute etc without using regex?

nickb Over a year ago

@AbdulJabbarWebBestow No, it's not. It parses the HTML into a DOM-like structure, which we can then operate on.

d0nut Over a year ago

@AbdulJabbarWebBestow likely, no. It's more likely using a lexer/parser that was designed especially for handling html. It's a lot easier to parse HTML this way. If i'm wrong, someone please correct me.

Abdul Jabbar Over a year ago

I am probably learning new thing DOMDocument today. Thanks to you and @stribizhev. I had been using Regex to manipulate my HTML between documents. Let's see if someone else has better solution than DOMDocument.

d0nut Over a year ago

@AbdulJabbarWebBestow DOMDocument is probably the best solution for handling HTML pages, actually. It's pretty much the standard way to do it.

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