get_meta_tags()

get_meta_tags() — Extracts all meta tag content attributes from a file and returns an array.

Built-in function of PHP 8.5. The manual lists it as available in PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8. This page is the reference card: signature, parameters and return value, plus the changelog and the example the manual provides.

What it does

Opens filename and parses it line by line for <meta> tags in the file. The parsing stops at </head>.

Signature

get_meta_tags(string $filename, bool $use_include_path = false): array|false

Parameters

Parameter	Type	What it takes
$filename	string	The path to the HTML file, as a string. This can be a local file or an URL.
$use_include_path	bool	Setting use_include_path to true will result in PHP trying to open the file along the standard include path as per the include_path directive. This is used for local files, not URLs.

Return value

Returns an array with all the parsed meta tags. The value of the name property becomes the key, the value of the content property becomes the value of the returned array, so you can easily use standard array functions to traverse it or access single values. Special characters in the value of the name property are substituted with '_', the rest is converted to lower case. If two meta tags have the same name, only the last one is returned. Returns false on failure.

Example

A runnable snippet:

// Assuming the above tags are at www.example.com $tags = get_meta_tags('http://www.example.com/'); // Notice how the keys are all lowercase now, and // how . was replaced by _ in the key. echo $tags['author']; // name echo $tags['keywords']; // php documentation echo $tags['description']; // a php manual echo $tags['geo_position']; // 49.33;-86.59