php regex preg_match find multiple values then Preg_match_all [duplicate] - php

Question

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How do you parse and process HTML/XML in PHP?
(31 answers)
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I have to find a values between specific tags in HTML page through php regex. but I want if HTML page contain multiple value then do preg_match_all otherwise do nothing.
For example if preg_match find 4 values in HTML then do preg_match_all in next phase otherwise if it is preg_match find only 1 tag value then do nothing.
<td class"page">
<span class="my-tag">value1</span>
<span class="my-tag">value2</span>
<span class="my-tag">value3</span>
<span class="my-tag">value4</span>
</td>
preg_match('/<td class"page">(.*?)<\/td>/s';)
now do preg_match_all in next phase because preg_match find 4 values
preg_match_all('|\<span class="my-tag"\>(.*?)\</span\>|', $html, $string);
and if HTML contain only 1 value like this
<td class"page">
<span class="my-tag">value1</span>
</td>
So if HTML contain only 1 value then do nothing

Answer 1

Basically, from your preg_match, you would be getting a string back that looks like this:
Array
(
[0] => <td class="page">
<span class="my-tag">value1</span>
<span class="my-tag">value2</span>
<span class="my-tag">value3</span>
<span class="my-tag">value4</span>
</td>
[1] =>
<span class="my-tag">value1</span>
<span class="my-tag">value2</span>
<span class="my-tag">value3</span>
<span class="my-tag">value4</span>
)
With that, we can just go ahead and do the match - regardless of if it only found one match or multiple matches. (Because it's not going to hurt anything to match one item or four items, I am proposing to move the logic down in your code.) Then we can just count how many it found and store that in a variable named $count.
// CHECK TO SEE IF WE FOUND A MATCH
if (isset($matches[1])) {
// GO AHEAD AND DO THE MATCH ON THE SPANS
preg_match_all('~<span class="my-tag">(.*?)</span>~s', $string, $span_matches);
$count = count($span_matches[1]);
// IF WE FOUND MULTIPLE MATCHES, LIST THEM OUT
if ($count > 1) {
print 'COUNT IS: '.$count;
print_r($span_matches[1]);
}
// WE DID NOT MATCH ANY SPAN TAGS
elseif ($count == 0) {
print 'COUNT IS ZERO - CRAP';
}
// IF WE ONLY FOUND ONE MATCH, WE DON'T NEED TO DO ANYTHING
else {
print 'COUNT IS EXACTLY 1 - DO NOTHING';
}
}
// WE DID NOT FIND AN INITAL MATCH TO BEGIN WITH
else {
print 'WE DID NOT FIND A MATCH';
}
From there, it's just a simple if/else statement to do what you want with it.
Here is a working demo:
http://ideone.com/SiPiOx

Answer 2

You can combine multiple patterns in a single regex with the pipe character in parentheses:
preg_match('/(cats?|dogs?|re.*tion)/', $string, $matches);