display a specific tag value from an html with php
<blockquote>
  <p><strong>Possible Duplicate:</strong><br>
  <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3308530/php-strip-a-specific-tag-from-html-string">PHP: Strip a specific tag from HTML string?</a><br>
  <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3577641/how-to-parse-and-process-html-with-php">How to parse and process HTML with PHP?</a>  </p>
</blockquote>



<p>I have a description column on my mysql database which contains some html. like this:</p>

<pre><code>&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.somesite.co/uploads/Optimized-basil_rajapaksa.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="183" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: medium; color: #0000ff;"&gt;neis,a" iri&amp;uacute; we&amp;yuml;rka leojhs&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: medium; color: #333333;"&gt;&amp;uacute;Yaj&amp;uacute;oHd, wdpd&amp;frac34;hjrekaf.a jD;a;Sh wr.,h i&amp;iuml;nkaOfhka idl&amp;Eacute;Pd ls&amp;Iacute;u ioyd wd&amp;frac34;:sl ixj&amp;frac34;Ok wud;H neis,a rdcmlaI uy;d iy &amp;uacute;Yaj&amp;uacute;oHd, wdpd&amp;frac34;hjrekaf.a i&amp;ntilde;;s i&amp;iuml;f&amp;iuml;,kh w;r fyg ^6&amp;amp; &amp;Egrave;k ;j;a idl&amp;Eacute;Pdjla meje;a&amp;ugrave;ug ;SrKh &amp;ugrave; ;sfnkjd'&amp;uacute;Yaj&amp;uacute;oHd, wdpd&amp;frac34;hjrekaf.a i&amp;ntilde;;s i&amp;iuml;f&amp;iuml;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: medium; color: #333333;"&gt;wod&amp;lt; idl&amp;Eacute;Pdjg wud;H neis,a rdcmlaI uy;df.ka ks&amp;lt; jYfhka werhqula ,enqK nj o Tyq i|yka l&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>when i echo it on my web page its display the complete html but
i want to display only the first span tag value from this whole html on my web page 
how it can be done?</p>
