merge html body text with php

mvhall

Hi all,
I am looking for some code to merge three or more html pages, but only the text in between the body tags.
As I am quite new to php I was wondering if someone could give me a flying start by sending some code that does this more or less. Or a tutorial would do fine. Anyone?
Thanks,
Maurice

drag0n

So you want all the stuff after the body tags merged into 1 html file?
Could you explain more?

mvhall

Hi drag0n thanks for responding.
We have three HTML files made with a template and they have some tables in between the body tags.
What we want is to avoid copying and appending all the header info and just merge these tables with sometimes a little text above it.
I presumed that when you just append these html files you get a lot of rubbish that you don't want. So how do I take a file and strip it into parts and then merge some of these parts in a certain order? Is there some clever algorithm looking for tag names? or even better a function that just reads between the body tags?

scoppc

I think we should call it C&P method. Copy and Paste.

Pig

You can do it with regex and file functions, though it's not exactly simple. A better way to do it would be to have your content seperated from the rest of the document. Most people have seperate header, body, and footer files.
eg:
<?php
include("header.php");

//some body content here

include("footer.php");
?>

Many also use a database to store their information.

In either of these scenarios you could simply include the content without messy regex/file functions. That's the beauty of seperating data from formatting. Sorry that doesn't exaclty answer your question, but at least it's a start.

drag0n

strstr()
strchr()

mvhall

Hm, yes It would reduce the problem if I was able to construct these 3 files myself. Unfortunately our company has standard templates so I am stuck with quite a bit of header rubbisch (HTML) that I have to take out. So copy and paste really is not what I asked for, I thought that was clear from my 1st question (I am new in PHP but that doesn't automatically mean I have not surpassed the C&P level). 🙁
What you tell me is that I have to parse the whole document and only take the in between the body tag bits? I was hoping someone had some code to do this, that I could adapt slightly.
Can I store the total document in a string, and then parse? What are the limits of these string variables in PHP? Or do I have to stick it in an array?
Thanks,

Pig

strstr will not get him what he wants. It will return everything after the <body> tag, but not remove the crap after the content. It's lunch time for me. If I get back in time I'll try to set up a regex for you, but no promises. Maybe someone loitering around here has more time.

mvhall

hey Pig, I would really appreciate it if you had some time to give me a hint. I'm in no big hurry though 😃
cheers Maurice

drag0n

If you dont want to wait and do it your self:
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/helpsheets/regex.html

mvhall

Ok regEx it is than. Will have to look into it and experiment a bit with it. I've seen it also has got links to a library, maybe there is something ready to use.
Thanks for pointing me in that direction. 😃

Someone at a flash forum actually believed it to be standard functionality in flash. Unfortunately, and hence my lack on that front, not part of flash (yet).

Greetz,