在preg_match中使用多行字符串

Question

i have the following problem: I try to find a part of a website using preg_match:

preg_match("|<TABLE BORDER=1 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=5 WIDTH=1280 HEIGHT=50>
<TR VALIGN=TOP>
<TD WIDTH=1280 BGCOLOR=WHITE>
<FONT COLOR=BLACK SIZE=2>
This
is
a
test
</FONT>
</TR>
</TABLE>
|",$website,$matches);

It works fine... But the value of the table (in this case "This is a test") changes every day so i tried to do it like this:

preg_match("|<TABLE BORDER=1 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=5 WIDTH=1280 HEIGHT=50>
<TR VALIGN=TOP>
<TD WIDTH=1280 BGCOLOR=WHITE>
<FONT COLOR=BLACK SIZE=2>
(.*)
</FONT>
</TR>
</TABLE>
|",$website,$matches);

But now the return value of the function is 0, so it didn't found any matches. Only when i try this it works again:

preg_match("|<TABLE BORDER=1 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=5 WIDTH=1280 HEIGHT=50>
<TR VALIGN=TOP>
<TD WIDTH=1280 BGCOLOR=WHITE>
<FONT COLOR=BLACK SIZE=2>
(.*)
(.*)
(.*)
(.*)
</FONT>
</TR>
</TABLE>
|",$website,$matches);

So my problem is now: How can I find the part even if the value of the table has 4 lines today and 6 tomorrow for example (i never know^^)

Thank You

Answer 1

You need the s modifier to match over multiple lines, see the manual:

...
|s",$website,$matches);

However, regex is not the best way to parse html, you'd better use something like PHP Simple HTML DOM parser.