help w/ PHP function?

[iamme]

i'm trying to figure this out myself, but i'm stuck

what i'm trying to do is take an rss feed and extract just the image and URL. here's an example feed:

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/teams/lal/photos/rss.xml

the description tag has a link to the jpg, link to a full sized version, and a rather long comment. i'm trying to use the preg_replace() php function to extract everything between the <a href></a> tags, which should give me the pic and link to the full sized version. can anyone help me?

 

[Kelemvor]

Dude, This belongs in the dedicated Programming forum...

Oh wait, we don't have one of those... But still, Software would work too... more or less.

 

[iamme]

yeah, but i got at least one reply in OT

any php gurus want to help me out? :beer:

 

[iamme]

anyone bored on MLK Day and want to give it a shot?

 

[GeneralDisarray]

You wouldn't really want to use preg_replace here, unless you're using the big hammer for a little nail technique, as the only way to use that function would be to attempt to remove everything except your target strings. Since this data has more than one set of <a> tags you will need more than just one function... you can:

Use a for/while loop until no instance is found
Use a split function and a foreach loop of the array

Either way, within one of those you can more easily use substr() to get a specific string you desire, using preg is not necessary as the strings are predictable.

If you're interested in this method, I could do a mock up for you.

 

[yllus]

Hey iamme,

By far the most reliable script you can write here would make use of the simplexml_load_file() function. It'd load the page in and turn it into a PHP object, which you can easily parse to get the image and URL. The code below should be pretty much what you're after.

Edit: I should note that the SimpleXML extension requires PHP 5.