I want to get <a> tags, how?

[wren9]

Good morning guys,

I want to get all <a> tags on a html page.

and including all characters between <a> & </a>

Any codes demo in REGEX or DOM please?

Sorry this is my first time to scrape a page.

Thank you VERY VERY VERY much your codes will be very very helpful to me, since this is my first and currently learning to scrape a html page.

GOD BLESS.

[scrupul0us]

wren9: we've been over this a zillion times... parse the RSS feed for the craigslist page you want to scrape... its so much easier than what you keep asking for

[wren9]

I dunno i'm not good in RSS either.

Sigh i'm a poor programmer. 🙁

[scrupul0us]

right but in one of your hundred threads about this i told you i'd help you if you gave me more details... you abandoned the thread and make something like 10 more

what exactly, are you trying to get from the page

just links?
titles?
descriptions?

are you trying to format the output in any special way?

give me the details and i'll gladly help you... but please cease and desist with the "new topic" button over this 😃

[wren9]

Scrupulous thanks for your kindness.

All i want really is to get all <a> tags and all of its content between <a> ... </a> on a html page.

example
<a href="/tlg/1193225171.html">OPEN MIC SUNDAY NITE!!! -</a>
<a href="/tlg/1193225171.html">OPEN MIC MONDAY NITE!!! -</a>
<a href="/tlg/1193225171.html">OPEN MIC FRIDAY NITE!!! -</a>and
and so on...

thanks.

[scrupul0us]

whats the link to the craigslist page?

[wren9]

Let say this one below,
http://atlanta.craigslist.org/tlg/

By the way can you also show me a good tutorial on how to scrape a page using RSS?

I want to learn that technique also, this is really my first time to scrape a page.

Thanks.

[scrupul0us]

<?php
$url = 'http://atlanta.craigslist.org/tlg/index.rss';
$xmlString = file_get_contents($url);
$xml = simplexml_load_string($xmlString);

foreach($xml->item as $listing)
{
	$link = $listing->link;
	$title = $listing->title;
	echo '<a href='.$link.'>'.$title.'</a><br/>';
}
?>

[nrg_alpha]

I thought I posted this, but seems to have vanished? In any case, here it is again...

You can try something along these lines (using dom / xpath):

$dom = new DOMDocument;
@$dom->loadHTMLFile('http://atlanta.craigslist.org/tlg/');
$xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);
$aTag = $xpath->query('//a'); // fetch all anchor tags

foreach ($aTag as $node) {
	echo $node->getAttribute('href') . ' - ' . utf8_decode($node->nodeValue) . "<br />\n";
}

So this will fetch the href's value as well as the tag's value.

[scrupul0us]

you dont really 'scrape' a page using 'rss'... rss is just a feed that many sites use to syndicate their content

if a site isnt syndicating using RSS or another method then the next best method is to parse the document with DOM and Xpath... thats a whole other can of worms

[scrupul0us]

@nrg: you could use DOM here, but since they have an RSS feed, you might as well just parse that

not sure which performance wise wins but at the end of the day, they both work 🙂

[nrg_alpha]

Right.. I forgot about simple xml.

[scrupul0us]

nrg_alpha;10916381 wrote:

Right.. I forgot about simple xml.

and im willing to bet that at some point so will I... i used to be a big regex/simpleXML fan boy but have recently been vesting alot of time in DOM as it tends to be more favored...

that being said, i love using simplexml so :p

[nrg_alpha]

scrupul0us;10916382 wrote:

and im willing to bet that at some point so will I... i used to be a big regex/simpleXML fan boy but have recently been vesting alot of time in DOM as it tends to be more favored...

that being said, i love using simplexml so :p

Yeah, for scraping / parsing webpages, regex is not the best way, that's for sure (and this is coming from a 'regex fanboy'). I've started getting into dom / xpath (and should have a closer look at simple xml as well). So much to learn.. so little time. Damn you, ever evolving web technology! Hold still so I can drink you in 😉

[wren9]

@scrupulous thanks for your very nice answer.

@ thanks also.

@scrupulous, Since you guys are very helpful, Along the way i found this interesting thing,
http://simplehtmldom.sourceforge.net/

Again i'm a noob on DOM so i also need to study and review that later.

Thanks again guys.

[scrupul0us]

wren: you are very welcome... in the future though, it's in your best interest to keep things in one thread and be descriptive from the get go so the community here can better aid you

cheers