Parse an HTML Table with PHP

by jl2 on October 14th, 2009

I recently was in the position where I needed to parse a table within an HTML file on a number of different pages. To save myself some time I wrote this simple script to handle the parsing programatically.

The script will work with most simple tables where the <th> tag has been used to define headers. It is unlikely to work with nested tables! Essentially, it worked for the purposes it was created for but your milage may vary!

function parseTable($html)
{
  // Find the table
  preg_match("/<table.*?>.*?<\/[\s]*table>/s", $html, $table_html);
 
  // Get title for each row
  preg_match_all("/<th.*?>(.*?)<\/[\s]*th>/", $table_html[0], $matches);
  $row_headers = $matches[1];
 
  // Iterate each row
  preg_match_all("/<tr.*?>(.*?)<\/[\s]*tr>/s", $table_html[0], $matches);
 
  $table = array();
 
  foreach($matches[1] as $row_html)
  {
    preg_match_all("/<td.*?>(.*?)<\/[\s]*td>/", $row_html, $td_matches);
    $row = array();
    for($i=0; $i<count($td_matches[1]); $i++)
    {
      $td = strip_tags(html_entity_decode($td_matches[1][$i]));
      $row[$row_headers[$i]] = $td;
    }
 
    if(count($row) > 0)
      $table[] = $row;
  }
  return $table;
}

Download parseTable.php

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20 Comments →

Derek permalink

Thank you! I have been all over google looking for a simple version of this that I can use. This is absolutely perfect! This is the first I found with good regex.

Thanks,

Derek
jim permalink

it rocks… thanks
Chals permalink

please Download “parseTable.php” in some text format

thanks
Marat permalink

Shouldn’t it be this way?
preg_match(“/(.*)/s”, $html, $table_html);
preg_match_all(‘/(.*?)/s’,$table_html[1],$matches);
Marat permalink

whoa! it crashed my regexp )
lixiphp permalink

cool! you are so wonderful~

it helps me a lot.

thank you very much!
daniele permalink

How this works if you have a table in a table?
I think it doesn’t work…

</table

will return this exact text: "”
daniele permalink

fix:

table 1
table 2
/table 2
/table1

will match: table2
graeme permalink

fix: preg_match(“/(.*)?/s”, $html, $table_html);

Note the (.*)? instead of .*? so that the matches are put into $table_html. Thanks.
graeme permalink

NM. Now, I see what Marat was saying. The first preg_match needs brackets.
Andreas permalink

How can i use this function. Can you give me an example please.

Thanks
sandeep permalink

Wow! after a 30 minutes of search i got something good.
Dark knight permalink

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olympic london permalink

Man I would love to have a job like that…
Lurlene Prose permalink

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iphone permalink

Manche schaffen es, andere nicht.
lordrt permalink

hello, where can I get the php file to download? the link here is sending me to a blank page
zygomatic permalink

My PHP is a little rusty and I’m a novice for preg functions. Does anyone know a way to skip checking for TH tags if they don’t exist and/or just number the columns/indicies manually? Thanks