Values from HTML Table

shanis42p

Hello all,

I am currently revising a site for a client,

He has all of his product tables in HTML, not in a MySQL Database. To make matters worse Each type of product comes in 5 different types.

So each row of his tables has Common Product, Common Dimensions, Common Shape, then five different part numbers (for each of the styles)

I have set up a MySQL database with each part# in its own row, that way I can set up some sort of E-Com shopping Cart, yada yada.

What he is requesting is that I leave the tables as they appear now. His reason is that the table is 600 rows long now with 5 Part# in each. So retrieving records from the database would result in a 3000 row table. I would like to leave these tables alone just add a link to a detail page with a GET statement. No problem right.

link set to "detail.php?partnum=10101"

The detail page has the add to cart and stuff like that. Thats not the problem, it works.

The problem is I have to type that for 3000 table records.

My question;
Is there a way in PHP/HTML to extract the text in the HTML table cell? I want to be able to set all the items to:

"detail.php?partnum=<?php extracttext ?>"

Any help or guidance would be awesome.

Thanks,
Shanis

Roger_Ramjet

I wish this forum was coded for no-cache, I keep on loosing half my edits because I forget to refresh the page.

Anyway:

On second thoughts, I would use search-replace on the html file in a text editor since it is a one-off. You could have it done by the time you had writen half the code. But the answer to your quetion is:

Assuming that it is standard html then running str_replace to replace the <td><td> tags with a comma would give you a csv that you can feed right into your table. Of course you will also have to strip out the other html tags completely.

str_replace: http://uk2.php.net/manual/en/function.str-replace.php

Just a point, b*****s to what he wants, who is the programmer here. The whole point of php/mysql is that you can generate the html page with as many columns as you want. So if you want a table with 5 columns and 600 rows, no problem. And when you add or delete items, the page automatically reflects this. If you want to change the layout at a later date, no editing 600 lines of code in html, jusy 4 or 5 in php. Don't tell him, just do it and explain it afterwards.

Of course if you have a problem with the php to generate the page then ask for help here.

----- EDIT ---------

an example of code that generates a multi-column table

//--- MULTIPLE DEBTS RETURNED ---
// query returned more than 1 debt so display them for user to select one 	
	else {
		echo '<div id="multi">';
		echo '<h5>' . $debt_count . ' debts found </h5><h6>[click on a debt to view details]</h6>';
  	echo '<table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3">';
  	echo '<tr><th>track</th><th>' . $client . ' ref</th><th>name</th><th>amount</th><th>balance</th><th>status</th></tr>';
		// Iterate through the results
		while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($debts)) {
			$link = '<a href="index.php?go_search=1&go_field=track&go_string=' . $row['track'] . '">';
  			echo '<tr><td>' . $link . $row['track'] . '</a></td>';
  			echo '<td>' . $link . $row['ref'] . '</a></td>';
  			echo '<td>' . $link . $row['name'] . '</a></td>';
  			echo '<td align="right">' . $link . $row['curr'] . $row['amt'] . '</a></td>';
  			echo '<td align="right">' . $link . $row['curr'] . $row['amt_due'] . '</a></td>';
  			echo '<td title="' . $row['status'] . '">' . $link . $row['code'] . '</a></td></tr>';
 		}
  	echo '</table>';
  	echo '</div>';	
	}
//--- END MULTIPLE DEBTS

shanis42p

No, I know how to generate a multi-column table from PHP/MySQL that is not the concern. Nor is turning HTML into a comma seperated txt file, not a problem.

I was asking specifically if there is a way to extract the text so I can use a generic GET like "detail.php?partnum=<?php Extract() ?> in all the link fields. I am particularly cruched for time on this one, it is inefficient for me to do one 600 row table, and literally 50 or so other smaller tables. The different tables have a different number of columns so I would end up with either one database table with fields "Tablenum,1,2,3,4,5,6" and then reference the table number while passing from page to page or like 50 database tables.

Should it be in a MySQL database? Absolutely! Can I handle the copy/paste to get it there? Absolutely. Adding these dynamic links one by one is going to take longer, so I am looking for a shorter way. But if I cant invoice for the time it is kind of a waste.

Thanks for the info but if there is a way to extract the text that is already there, it will be much shorter timewise than putting it into mysql via copy/paste.

Any other input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks Again,
Shanis

shanis42p

I think I see where you are going with str_replace,

That might work.

I will keep you posted.

Thanks,
Shane

shanis42p

OK,

I went off of you mentioning str_replace.

I decided to play in Microsoft Excel, I know, what the f###.

I copyed inside the table tags, (if you copy all including the table tags Excel just turns it into a table) and pasted into Excel.

Considering all of the part num's are the same length I used excel functions (left, right, min, max) to deconcatonated the strings in <td> tags. I copyed all the part num's (which were now in there own column) and inserted them into a blank column I had left after "detail.php?partnum=".
I reconcatonated the string in excel and pasted the text in my editor. Worked perfectly, and took me all of 15 minutes.

Gracias,
Shanis