How to get an item from the webpage using php?

Question

I want to get the data from a website, therefore I created the code below in php. The content which I want to get is inside a <div>:

<div class="post-text" itemprop="text">
    // Content I want to get 
</div>

My PHP code is as follow:

 <?php
    $page = file_get_contents('http://somewebsite.com');

    preg_match_all("/<div class=\"post-text\" itemprop=\"text\".*div>/", $page, $agent_name);

    print_r($agent_name);
?>

But when I execute the code, it does not show anything on the page. The output I get is like:

Array ( [0] => Array ( ) )

Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong?

you should use a dom parser, they have been written to do such things. OR take a look at [this](http://php.net/manual/en/reference.pcre.pattern.modifiers.php) and add the `m (PCRE_MULTILINE)` flag.... — n00dl3, Jan 27 '15 at 09:13
Now you can't say you haven't anymore - http://php.net/manual/en/class.domdocument.php — , Jan 27 '15 at 09:34

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 27 '15 at 09:32

For matching multiple lines of text, i usually use the PCRE_DOTALL modifier - using the pattern "/<div class=\"post-text\" itemprop=\"text\".*div>/s" instead of "/<div class=\"post-text\" itemprop=\"text\".*div>/" (just add the s at the end of your pattern) should give you the expected result.

How to get an item from the webpage using php?

1 Answers1