Question

for example i have data response from here:
http://www.facebook.com/ajax/shares/view/?target_fbid=410558838979218&__a=1

there is a pattern that looks like this:

data-hovercard=\"\/ajax\/hovercard\/hovercard.php?id=655581307\">

how can i parse it with the preg_match_all() in PHP?
I know i need complex regular expression, but i dont have a clue how to write one for such pattern in the text.
Thanks for help

UPD:
the following code does give the id:

$str = 'hovercard.php?id=655581307';
preg_match_all('/[0-9]{9}/', $str , $matches);
print_r($matches);

BUT

this one doesnt

$url = 'http://www.facebook.com/ajax/shares/view/?target_fbid=410558838979218&__a=1';
$html = file_get_contents($url);
preg_match_all('/[0-9]{9}/', $html, $matches);
print_r($matches);

Answer 1

This gets a bit messy due to the backslashes escaping stuff, but to match exactly that string this call to preg_match_all() should work:

preg_match_all('#(data-hovercard=\\\\"\\\\/ajax\\\\/hovercard\\\\/hovercard.php\?id=[0-9]+\\\\">)#', $str, $matches);

That will give you the whole string you posted in $matches. However, if you only want the numbers from id you can add extra parenthesis around that like so:

preg_match_all('#(data-hovercard=\\\\"\\\\/ajax\\\\/hovercard\\\\/hovercard.php\?id=([0-9]+)\\\\">)#', $str, $matches);

And the numbers will appear individually in $matches (similarly, you can remove the parenthesis that wraps the whole regexp to stop matching the whole string).

Update:

And now I see the question is updated. If your new example fails it’s because there are no sequence of 9 digits in the data you get. When I try myself I simply get a response that says I need to log in, so maybe your matching issues is in fact due to you not getting the data you expect? Try dumping $html to see if what you are looking for is in fact in there.