Question

I’m kinda stuck here.
I have this pattern:
<a class="title" href="showthread.php?t=XXXXX" id="thread_title_XXX">DATADATA</a>
I know that in my string (a webpage) all my data is stored in this format, while it has the ‘unique signature’ I just wrote. the XXX’s count is dynamic, probabaly somewhere between 2 to 12 DIGITS (each X is a digit).
I can write a long expression to find the whole line, but I want to extract the data, not the whole thing.

How can I do it ? An example would be appreciated.
Thank you!

Answer 1

what actually you want to do ? Get the XXXXX signature or all links?

try this – this is get a signature and data

<?php 
$S = '<a class="title" href="showthread.php?t=1234567" id="thread_title_XXX">DATADATA</a>';
$pattern = '!<a.*href="showthread.php\?t=(.*)".* id=".*">(.*)</a>!';

echo "<pre>";
print_r(preg_match($pattern, $S, $res));
print_r($res);
echo "</pre>";
?>