John Davidson

Message:

How can I find only the telephone number (1234827382) in the following string ($x)?

IMPORTANT: I used htmlspecialchars() function on $x (text). Without useing this function the regex works. I need to find a regex solution when I use htmlspecialchars() before regex.

 font-size: 14px; color: #333;" >asd:</td> <td width="150" align="left" valign="top"

    bgcolor="#f5f5f5" style="padding: 6px; border: 1px solid

    #eaeaea;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; color:

    #333;" >Tel:</td> <td align="left" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;

    border: 1px solid #eaeaea;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;

    font-size: 14px; color: #333;" ><a href="tel:1234827382">1234827382</a></td> </tr>

<tr> <td width="150" align="left"

I have tried:

$p = '/href="tel:12.{20}/';

preg_match_all($p, $x, $matchestel);

print_r($matchestel);

If I try escape with \ then it also dont work:

$p = '/href=\"tel:12.{20}/';

If the text doesnt contain quote: <a href=tel:1234827382" (instead of this: <a href="tel:1234827382" )
then it finds, and after that I could remove the href" from the beginning. I know it is not the best solution.
I think the problem is that I need to escape the " from pattern.

---

My Answer:
You can use the following regex pattern to find the telephone number in the string after using htmlspecialchars():

php
$x = "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Duis nec 1234827382 nisi. Sed euismod, velit ac ultricies.";

preg_match('/\b\d{10}\b/', htmlspecialchars_decode($x), $matches);

$telephone_number = $matches[0];

echo $telephone_number;


This regex pattern `\b\d{10}\b` will match exactly 10 digits in the string, which corresponds to the telephone number in your example. By using `htmlspecialchars_decode()` function before applying the regex, you can decode the HTML entities back to their original characters and then search for the telephone number.