Splitting strings

mwebb415

Hi all -

I'm trying to take an HTML file, rip out most of the tags, break it down into smaller sections, and then pull out the last 5 sections or so and feed them to a javascript. Should be fun. I've got most of what I want, but I think I'm stuck on something that should be coming way too easily.

I've got the HTML file and I've stripped out everything but the and <A> tags, which I need. I've got them all in an array (used explode to get them there). The problem is that the elements of the array take the following format:

some date: 
blah: <A>blah</A> blah blah 
blah blah blah 
blah blah blah

blah: <A>blah</A> blah blah 
blah blah blah 
blah blah blah

The info after the date line will always be 3 lines in that format, though the count of words and punctuation could vary. There can be as few as 1 4 line section (date and 3 lines of text), or any number of sub-text sections. I need to get the individual sections down to one string each. For instance, I want stringA to be the first 4 lines(including the tags) and stringB to be the next 3 lines, and so on. I think I had it earlier by going to another array, then back to a string, but I'm thinking there must be a better way that I just can't see. Any suggestions? If I've made myself as clear as mud, I apologize.

Thanks in advance.

weekender

if you don't know exactly how many lines are in each section, then it's a bit difficult. but if you do know...

//array of code is $code
//set a $count variable
$count=1;
//set three arrays for the sections
$section1 = array();
$section2 = array();
$section3 = array();
//loop through each line of the code
while($line = $code){
    if($count=<4){
        //add the first four lines to $section1
        $section1[] = $line;
    }
    if($count>4 && $count=<7){
        //add the next three lines to $section2
        $section2[] = $line;
    }
    //then continue like this
    //increment $count
    $count++;
}

and your done! you may get some syntax errors with that, as i just wrote it straight in here, no testing.

hope it works! adam

bubblenut

Do you know what the lines are broken with? (\n or \r\ etc?)

drawmack

Originally posted by mwebb415
some date: 
blah: <A>blah</A> blah blah 
blah blah blah 
blah blah blah 

blah: <A>blah</A> blah blah 
blah blah blah 
blah blah blah

Fact 1: Main heading starts with a date
Fact 2: Sub headings start with a line that includes an <a>

this is all we need.

<?php
$new_array = array();
$i=-1;
//this is the regex for your date. This assumes 
//mm-dd-yyyy format with zero padding on month and 
//day and / or - for the seperator
$date_format = '^[0-2][0-9][/-][0-3][0-9][/-][0-9]{4}';
foreach($orig_array as $line) {
    if(ereg($date_format,$line) || eregi(': <a'),$line) {
        $i++;
        $new_array[$i] = '';
    } //end if
    $new_array[$i] .= $line;
} //end foreach
?>

mwebb415

drawmack, all,

Thanks for the replies. Sorry, I wasn't more clear. The date isn't just year, it's

Wednesday, 9/9/1999:

The number of lines after the date line is always three, but then there can be any number of sections of 3 lines after that. Can you just count up the tags, stop at 4 the first time (3 after that) and write each one out?

Also, I could be making things harder for myself, but here's the basics of what I'm doing:

-fread to get the file contents from the html file
-explode to get the file broken down by a specific <TD class=x> tag
-loop through each element of the array, strip out HTML tags except and <A>
-because the date line doesn't have a after it, use preg_replace on that string to replace : with :

This ends up giving me each array element the way I want it in terms of text, , and <A> tags positioned correctly, but the element is too big and needs to be broken down. If I break it back up into another array using the , explode strips out the tags, so I have to add them back in (using implode?) once I count them up and create the output string. I was thinking that's way too much processing for what I would think should be a quick thing. Still too new at this, maybe.

Thanks