Using regular expressions to extract the first image source from html codes?

Question

I would like to know how this can be achieved.

Assume: That there\'s a lot of html code containing tables, divs, images, etc.

Problem: How can I get matches

Answer 1

I agree with Andrew Moore. Using the DOM is much, much better. The HTML DOM images collection will return to you a reference to all image objects.

Let's say in your header you have,

and then in your body you have,

This will return the 1st image source. You can also loop through them along the lines of, (in head section)

function getAllImageSources()
    {
        var returnString = "";
        for (var i = 0; i < document.images.length; i++)
        {
            returnString += document.images[i].src + "\n"
        }
        return returnString;
    }

(in body)

If you're using JavaScript to do this, remember that you can't run your function looping through the images collection in your header. In other words, you can't do something like this,

because this won't work. The images haven't loaded when the header is executed and thus you'll get a null result.

Hopefully this can help in some way. If possible, I'd make use of the DOM. You'll find that a good deal of your work is already done for you.