extracting tables out of html files

jordy

Hey everyone..

I have a rather simple problem and i cant get to any solution. I have html files with tables in them.. i need to create a array out of them with the complete tables in the vals.

example:

<html>
<body>
<table border=1>
blah in table1
</table>
blah
<table cellpadding=10>
blah in table2
</table>
blah
</body>
</html>

the array should have 2 values on this file:

value1:
<table border=1>
blah in table1
</table>

value2:
<table cellpadding=10>
blah in table2
</table>

can anyone help me a little further? tried it with preg_match but didn't succeed 🙁

Mega

$string = <<<EOF
<html> 
<body> 
<table border=1> 
blah in table1 
</table> 
blah 
<table cellpadding=10> 
blah in table2 
</table> 
blah 
</body> 
</html> 

the array should have 2 values on this file: 

value1: 
<table border=1> 
blah in table1 
</table> 

value2: 
<table cellpadding=10> 
blah in table2 
</table> 
EOF;

preg_match_all('#<table.*>.*</table>#Uis', $string, $the_array);

foreach( $the_array AS $var ){
foreach( $var AS $var ){

echo "$var<br />";

}
}

you could shift the array values if you wanted and only use one foreach, but I'm too tired to go look it up 🙂

hope it works for you, did for me

🙂

jordy

thnxz Mega! works excellent for me! i was trying all sorts of tricks with preg_match.. hopless!

Mega

it took me a good half hour to learn it, and at leasta further half hour to perfect it to some degree.

I've been using it ever since, its a handy function 🙂

jordy

altered it a bit and putted it in a function:

function GetByUrlandTag($file,$tag,$no) {
$F_in = fopen($file, "r");
while (!feof($F_in))
$contents .= fgets($F_in, 1024);
fclose($F_in);

$pattern = "#<$tag.>.</$tag>#Uis";
preg_match_all($pattern, $contents, $arr);
$no = $no - 1;
return $arr[0][$no];
}

for example.. print the second table in a html file:
echo GetByUrlandTag("myfile.html","table","2");
or the 5th paragraph in a homepage:
echo GetByUrlandTag("http://otherserver.tld/myfile.html","p","5");