HTML table to php array

One way to make this easier is to use a dom parser http://simplehtmldom.sourceforge.net/ .

You are still going to have to extract the information into an array but this will make it easier to iterate through the elements one by one.

I've updated your edit to fix it.

function tdrows($elements)
{
    $str = "";
    foreach ($elements as $element) {
        $str .= $element->nodeValue . ", ";
    }

    return $str;
}

function getdata()
{
    $contents = "<table><tr><td>Row 1 Column 1</td><td>Row 1 Column 2</td></tr><tr><td>Row 2 Column 1</td><td>Row 2 Column 2</td></tr></table>";
    $DOM = new DOMDocument;
    $DOM->loadHTML($contents);

    $items = $DOM->getElementsByTagName('tr');

    foreach ($items as $node) {
        echo tdrows($node->childNodes) . "<br />";
    }
}

getdata();