HTML comment scraping in PHP

Question

I've been looking around but have yet to find a solution. I'm trying to scrape an HTML document and get the text between two comments however have been unable to do this successfully so far.

I'm using PHP and have tried the PHP Simple DOM parser recommended here many times but can't seem to get it to do what I want.

Here's (part of) the page that I wish to parse:

<div class="class">
  <!-- blah -->
    text
  <!-- end blah -->

  Text I want

  <!-- blah -->
    text
  <!-- end blah -->
</div>

Thanks

Could you show us your current code?

Randell
– Randell

2009-08-26 06:01:39 +00:00
Commented Aug 26, 2009 at 6:01 — Randell
– Randell, Commented Aug 26, 2009 at 6:01

DisgruntledGoat · Accepted Answer · 2009-08-26 12:00:24Z

4

Assuming that each comment is different (i.e. "blah" is not the same in the first and second sections), you can use some simple strpos to grab everything between them. Regular expressions are not necessary.

$startStr = '<!-- end blah1 -->';
$endStr = '<!-- start blah2 -->';

$startPos = strpos($HTML, $startStr) + strlen($startStr);
$endPos = strpos($HTML, $endStr );

$textYouWant = substr($HTML, $startPos, $endPos-$startPos);

If the two sets of comments are the same, you'll need to modify this to find the second "blah", using strpos's offset parameter

answered Aug 26, 2009 at 12:00

DisgruntledGoat

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Comments

Deniss Kozlovs · Accepted Answer · 2009-08-26 06:14:06Z

4

Maybe you can use regular expressions?

$text = '
<div class="class">
  <!-- blah -->
    text
  <!-- end blah -->

  Text I want

  <!-- blah -->
    text
  <!-- end blah -->
</div>
';

$regex = '/(<!-- end blah -->)(.*?)(<!-- blah -->)/ims';
$match = preg_match_all ($regex, $text, $matches);

answered Aug 26, 2009 at 6:14

Deniss Kozlovs

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2 Comments

DisgruntledGoat Over a year ago

Obligatory "now you have two problems" comment ;)

Jon Winstanley Over a year ago

"Every time you attempt to parse HTML with regular expressions, the unholy child weeps the blood of virgins".

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