php preg_match_all html dates with slashes error - php

Question

I've trying to preg_match_all a date with slashes in it sitting between 2 html tags; however its returning null.
here is the html:
> <td width='40%' align='right'class='SmallDimmedText'>Last Login: 11/14/2009</td>
Here is my preg_match_all() code
preg_match_all('/<td width=\'40%\' align=\'right\' class=\'SmallDimmedText\'>Last([a-zA-Z0-9\s\.\-\',]*)<\/td>/', $h, $table_content, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);
where $h is the html above.
what am i doing wrong?
thanks in advance

Answer 1

It (from a quick glance) is because you are trying to match:
Last Login: 11/14/2009
With this regex:
Last([a-zA-Z0-9\s\.\-\',]*)
The regex doesn't contain the required characters of : and / which are included in the text string. Changing the required part of the regex to:
Last([a-zA-Z0-9\s\.\-\',:/]*)
Gives a match
Would it be better to simply use a DOM parser, and then preform the regex on the result of the DOM lookup? It makes for nicer regex...
EDIT
The other issue is that your HTML is:
...40%' align='right'class='SmallDimmedText'>...
Where there is no space between align='right' and class='SmallDimmedText'
However your regex for that section is:
...40%\' align=\'right\' class=\'SmallDimmedText\'>...
Where it is indicated there is a space.
Use a DOM Parser It will save you more headaches caused by subtle bugs than you can count.
Just to give you an idea on how simple it is to parse using Simple HTML DOM.
$html = str_get_html(...);
$elems = $html->find('.SmallDimmedText');
if ( count($elems->children()) != 1 ){
throw new Exception('Too many/few elements found');
}
$text = $elems->children(0)->plaintext;
//parsing here is only an example, but you have removed all
//the html so that any regex used is really simple.
$date = substr($text, strlen('Last Login: '));
$unixTime = strtotime($date);

Answer 2

I see at least two problems :
in your HTML string, there is no space between 'right' and class=, and there is one space there in your regex
you must add at least these 3 characters to the list of matched characters, between the [] :
':' (there is one between "Login" and the date),
' ' (there are spaces between "Last" and "Login", and between ":" and the date),
and '/' (between the date parts)
With this code, it seems to work better :
$h = "<td width='40%' align='right'class='SmallDimmedText'>Last Login: 11/14/2009</td>";
if (preg_match_all("#<td width='40%' align='right'class='SmallDimmedText'>Last([a-zA-Z0-9\s\.\-',: /]*)<\/td>#",
$h, $table_content, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER)) {
var_dump($table_content);
}
I get this output :
array
0 =>
array
0 => string '<td width='40%' align='right'class='SmallDimmedText'>Last Login: 11/14/2009</td>' (length=80)
1 =>
array
0 => string ' Login: 11/14/2009' (length=18)
Note I have also used :
# as a regex delimiter, to avoid having to escape slashes
" as a string delimiter, to avoid having to escape single quotes

Answer 3

My first suggestion would be to minimize the amount of text you have in the preg_match_all, why not just do between a ">" and a "<"? Second, I'd end up writing the regex like this, not sure if it helps:
/>.*[0-9]{1,2}/[0-9]{1,2}/[0-9]{2,4}</
That will look for the end of one tag, then any character, then a date, then the beginning of another tag.

Answer 4

I agree with Yacoby.
At the very least, remove all reference to any of the HTML specific and simply make the regex
preg_match_all('#Last Login: ([\d+/?]+)#', ...