Question

I’m trying to strip the numeric and punctuations from a string leaving only alpha characters in SIMPLE HTML DOM, with no success I’ve tried multiple approaches and just can’t get it!

Example string: The Amazing Retard (2012) #1
Output string: The Amazing Retard

I understand it’s for an undefined method and I’ve looked at multiple pages for this, however I’m brain farting for how to include the method. Any help would be appreciated. The error that I get is

Fatal error: Call to undefined method simple_html_dom_node::preg_replace() in /home/**/public_html/wp-content/themes/*/***.php on line 123

The code is as follows:

<?php

function scraping_comic()
{
    // create HTML DOM
    $html = file_get_html('http://page-to-scrape.com');

    // get block
    foreach($html->find('li.browse_result') as $article)
    {
        // get title
        $item['title'] = trim($article->find('h4', 0)->find('span',0)->outertext);
        // get title url
        $item['title_url'] = trim($article->find('h4', 0)->find('a.grid-hidden',0)->href);
        // get image
        $item['image_url'] = trim($article->find('img.main_thumb',0)->src);
        // get details
        $item['details'] = trim($article->find('p.browse_result_description_release', 0)->plaintext);
        // get sale info
        $item['on_sale'] = trim($article->find('.browse_comics_release_dates', 0)->plaintext);
        // strip numbers and punctuations
        $item['title2'] = trim($article->find('h4',0)->find('span',0)->preg_replace("/[^A-Za-z]/","",$item['title2'], 0)->plaintext);

        $ret[] = $item;

    }

    // clean up memory
    $html->clear();
    unset($html);

    return $ret;
}
// -----------------------------------------------------------------------------


$ret = scraping_comic();

if ( ! empty($ret))
{
    $scrape = 'http://the-domain.com';


    foreach($ret as $v)
    {

        echo '<p>'.$v['title2'].'</p>';
        echo '<p><a href="'.$scrape.$v['title_url'].'">'.$v['title'].'</a></p>';
        echo '<p><img src="'.$v['image_url'].'"></p>';
        echo '<p>'.$v['details'].'</p>';
        echo '<p> '.$v['on_sale'].'</p>';
    }
}
else { echo 'Could not scrape site!'; }
?>

Answer 1

preg_replace is a php function, not a member of the simple_html_dom_node class. call it like this:

$matches = preg_replace ($pattern, $replacement, mixed $subject);

http://php.net/manual/en/function.preg-replace.php

it looks like your $pattern and replacement are OK; you’ll just pass in as the $subject the input you’re trying to change.

for example, this might be what you’re trying to achieve:

$item['title2'] = 
  trim(preg_replace("/[^A-Za-z]/","",$article->find('h4',0)->find('span',0));