php - Getting HTML before first <br/> tag -

i've been trying extract content of variable before first break tag occurs in php.

e.g

$content = "this content <br /> continues <br /> break tag"; 

i want part before first
tag , store in variable $first. above example, $first should contain "this content"

any idea how in php? i'm stuck split() php function...

$content = "this content <br /> continues <br /> break tag"; $parts = explode("<br />", $content); $first = trim($parts[0]); 

explode function: http://php.net/manual/en/function.explode.php

split string string

trim function: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.trim.php

strip whitespace beginning , end of string