How to PHP regex match an HTML document's meta description

php-regex-meta-description.php

<?php
function parseDescription($html) {
	// Get the 'content' attribute value in a <meta name="description" ... />
	$matches = array();

	// Search for <meta name="description" content="Buy my stuff" />
	preg_match('/<meta.*?name=("|\')description("|\').*?content=("|\')(.*?)("|\')/i', $html, $matches);
	if (count($matches) > 4) {
		return trim($matches[4]);
	}

	// Order of attributes could be swapped around: <meta content="Buy my stuff" name="description" />
	preg_match('/<meta.*?content=("|\')(.*?)("|\').*?name=("|\')description("|\')/i', $html, $matches);
	if (count($matches) > 2) {
		return trim($matches[2]);
	}

	// No match
	return null;
}
?>