php preg_match pattern for parsing tags

Question

I want to know a good preg_match pattern in php for extracting data between tags.

For example :

 <page>
    <username>someone</username>
    <id>3020778</id>
    <text xml:space="preserve"> The quick brown fox. </text>
 </page>

This will give me the string "The quick brown fox".

I have tried using

preg_match('/<text(.*)?>(.*)?<\/text>/', $content, $match);

But it seems doesn't work on some other cases.

Does anyone have a better solution or pattern?

And does using simpleXML make it more faster than preg_match?

There are some things that regular expressions are very good at. IMNSHO, parsing XML isn't one of them. Use an XML parser and get your data that way :) — cdegroot
– cdegroot, Commented Jul 5, 2011 at 9:46
Typically speaking, parsing your XML documents is almost always more reliable than using regular expressions. — jerluc
– jerluc, Commented Jul 5, 2011 at 9:47
This one sums it up nicely: stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/… — tdammers
– tdammers, Commented Jul 5, 2011 at 9:48
$page = simplexml_load_string($xml); echo $page->username, $page->id, $page->text; Also see A simple program to CRUD Node values of an XML file, Best XML Parser for PHP and Best Methods to parse HTML — Gordon
– Gordon, Commented Jul 5, 2011 at 10:02

sukinsan · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-19 08:39:16Z

1

    $a = '<page>
<username>someone</username>
  <id>3020778</id>
  <text xml:space="preserve"> The quick brown fox. </text>
</page>';

preg_match_all("(\<.+\>(.+)\<\/.+\>)U",$a, $r);    
?><pre><? print_r($r);?></pre><?

answered Jul 19, 2011 at 8:39

sukinsan

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