PHP Cut text between substrings with regexp

Question

I need to extract from this html:

<div class="list-group">
    <a class="list-group-item active">
        <h4 class="list-group-item-heading">{EVENT_GROUP_TIME}</h4>
    </a>
    {EVENTS:}
    <a class="list-group-item">
        <h4 class="list-group-item-heading">{EVENT_NAME}</h4>
        <p class="list-group-item-text"><i>{EVENT_LECTURER}</i></p>
        <p class="list-group-item-text">{EVENT_TIME}</p>
        <p class="list-group-item-text">{EVENT_LOCATION}</p>
    </a>
    {ENDEVENTS}
</div>

Two substring: with {EVENTS:}...{ENDEVENTS} block and second is everything else. In other words: $group_header =

<div class="list-group">
    <a class="list-group-item active">
        <h4 class="list-group-item-heading">{EVENT_GROUP_TIME}</h4>
    </a>
</div>

and $group_body =

<a class="list-group-item">
    <h4 class="list-group-item-heading">{EVENT_NAME}</h4>
    <p class="list-group-item-text"><i>{EVENT_LECTURER}</i></p>
    <p class="list-group-item-text">{EVENT_TIME}</p>
    <p class="list-group-item-text">{EVENT_LOCATION}</p>
</a>

I tried to make it with substr but it seems to be too slow with big date. Can someone suggest how to make such operation with regexp in php?

Have you tried using something like: simplehtmldom.sourceforge.net instead of regex? — ghstcode
– ghstcode, Commented Dec 1, 2013 at 10:33
No, i dont. The reason is that i need to parse just one "template" and using the whole lib is not what i want. But thing is cool. Added to bookmarks =) — ovnia
– ovnia, Commented Dec 1, 2013 at 10:37
As i said, i tried to do it with substr, strlen and strpos. Also tried some regexp matches like {EVENTS:}(.*?){ENDEVENTS} but it dont work @Nimrod007 — ovnia
– ovnia, Commented Dec 1, 2013 at 10:59
@user3017651 the expected output doesn't match the input you have, think about the closing </div> — HamZa
– HamZa, Commented Dec 1, 2013 at 11:21
You use XML, which has all the functionality for XPath and XQuery based extractions of data. And then you ruin it by stupid curly braces? Don't forget to shot the bonehead who had that idea. — ceving
– ceving, Commented Dec 1, 2013 at 12:12

Naveed Hasan · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-01 18:30:28Z

1

The Regular Expression You Need is this:

/(.*)({EVENTS:}(.*){ENDEVENTS})(.*)/s

Here is the complete PHP Code to test it:

<?php
$regex = "/(.*)({EVENTS:}(.*){ENDEVENTS})(.*)/s";
$string = "
<div class=\"list-group\">
    <a class=\"list-group-item active\">
        <h4 class=\"list-group-item-heading\">{EVENT_GROUP_TIME}</h4>
    </a>
    {EVENTS:}
    <a class=\"list-group-item\">
        <h4 class=\"list-group-item-heading\">{EVENT_NAME}</h4>
        <p class=\"list-group-item-text\"><i>{EVENT_LECTURER}</i></p>
        <p class=\"list-group-item-text\">{EVENT_TIME}</p>
        <p class=\"list-group-item-text\">{EVENT_LOCATION}</p>
    </a>
    {ENDEVENTS}
</div>

";
preg_match($regex,$string,$matches);
print_r($matches);
?>

Reference for the "s" modifier:

http://php.net/manual/en/reference.pcre.pattern.modifiers.php

edited Dec 1, 2013 at 18:30

answered Dec 1, 2013 at 17:59

Naveed Hasan

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6 Comments

HamZa Over a year ago

How would you match the rest ?

Naveed Hasan Over a year ago

I edited my answer so that other parts are also matched. (Match 1) + (Match 3) is the rest, with the brackets.

HamZa Over a year ago

Use the s modifier to match newlines with .. You'll end up with something like (.*){EVENTS:}.*?{ENDEVENTS}(.*)

Naveed Hasan Over a year ago

I am checking right now, it doesnt seem to work, wait.. Only the {EVENTS:} thing is getting matched.

HamZa Over a year ago

How are you printing the results ? Can you show me in a pastebin ?

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