Get between every strings - php

Question

Below is a function that can get a string with two other strings without a problem,
function GetBetween($content,$start,$end){
$r = explode($start, $content);
if (isset($r[1])){
$r = explode($end, $r[1]);
return $r[0];
}
return '';
}
Let's say I have code like this:
<code>Sample one</code>
<code>Sample two</code>
<code>Sample three</code>
When using GetBetween($content,'<code>',</code>') Instead of returning something like array("Sample one","Sample two","Sample three") it will only return the first one which is "Sample one"
How can I get it to return EVERYTHING between the two things I specify? I would appreciate it if I could get a solution that isn't hardcoded with the "" tags because I will be needing this for many different things.

Answer 1

Firstly regex is not the correct tool for parsing HTML/XML instead you can simply use DOMDocument like as
$xml = "<code>Sample one</code><code>Sample two</code><code>Sample three</code>";
$dom = new DOMDocument;
$dom->loadHTMl($xml);
$root = $dom->documentElement;
$code_data = $root->getElementsByTagName('code');
$code_arr = array();
foreach ($code_data as $key => $value) {
$code_arr[] = $value->nodeValue;
}
print_r($code_arr);
Output:
Array
(
[0] => Sample one
[1] => Sample two
[2] => Sample three
)

Answer 2

I've had to use a function like this, so I keep it handy:
//where a = content, b = start, c = end
function getBetween($a, $b, $c) {
$y = explode($b, $a);
$len = sizeof($y);
$arr = [];
for ($i = 1; $i < $len; $i++)
$arr[] = explode($c, $y[$i])[0];
return $arr;
}
Anything beyond this, you'll need to start using DomDocument.

Answer 3

Guess you could try something like this,
function GetBetween($content,$tagname){
$pattern = "#<\s*?$tagname\b[^>]*>(.*?)</$tagname\b[^>]*>#s";
preg_match($pattern, $string, $matches);
unset($matches[0]);
return $matches;
}
$content= "<code>Sample one</code><code>Sample two</code><code>Sample three</code>";
//The matching items are:
print_r(GetBetween($content, 'code'));