How to use preg match to get the contents of this html tag?

Question

I am trying to get at the desired content in this tag:

<p class="address">
desired content
</p>

this is my attempt:

preg_match_all("/\<p class=\"address\">(.*)\<\/p\>/", $contents, $matches);

But the $matches array is empty. Please help.

Thanks

Answer 1

You could try this:

$contents = '<p class="address">desired content</p>';
$res = preg_match_all("/\<p class=\"address\">(.*)\<\/p\>/s", $contents, $matches);
var_dump($res);
var_dump($matches);

$matches is not empty, right?

Answer 2

1. you need to set the PCRE_DOTALL flag to make . also match \\n - see modifiers
2. use .*? (ungreedy operator) to not prevent matching </p> in the capture group
3. you can use a different pattern delimiter and single quotes to remove all the backslashes, makes your pattern much more readable!

like so:

<?php
$contents = '<p class="address">
desired content
</p>';
$res = preg_match_all('#<p class="address">(.*?)</p>#s', $contents, $matches);
var_dump($matches);