You should use preg_match
for those tasks like this:
preg_match_all('|<div class=\'date\'>(?P<date>.*?) .*<a.*>(?P<user>.*)</a>|i', $data, $matches);
var_dump($matches);
Interating through all array elements:
foreach ($matches['user'] as $key => $user) {
var_dump($user);
}