Question

RegEx to extract text from HTML elements and populate an array

Asked by: zaarin

I've been searching through the Regular Expression posts, but have not been able to successfully implement what I want. I want to read though a string consisting of an entire HTML page, and pull out some key text from specific elements and ideally populate a multidimensional array with the text.

Each entry for the array should have 8 sub items, and I only need the first 10 entries located within the original HTML string.

The items needed are located within a table and all, except for one, are wrapped in a div with a class of "list". The exception is the href attribute of the anchor element that immediately precedes the first div.

The code example lists an example entry (the text strings needed are wrapped in curly brackets {}). The   at the beginning of the div.list appears to be inconsistent. It is not wanted regardless of if it's there or not.

Any help would be appreciated.

<tr>
	<td valign="top"><a href="{URL}"> <div class="list">{NAME}</div></a></td>
	<td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list">&nbsp;{POSITION}</div></td>
	<td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list">&nbsp;{EXTENSION}</div></td>
	<td width="110" valign="top"><div class="list">&nbsp;{UNIT}</div></td>
	<td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list">&nbsp;{AGENCY}</div></td>
	<td width="140" valign="top"><div class="list">&nbsp;{PHONE}</div></td>
	<td width="220" valign="top"><div class="list">&nbsp;{ADDRESS}</div></td>
</tr>

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Asked On: 2009-08-06 at 17:18:04ID24633456
Tags: JavaScript
,; RegEx
,; Regular Expression
,; Array
,; Multidimentional
,; HTML
,; element
Topics: Regular Expressions
,; JavaScript
Participating Experts: 1
Points: 100
Comments: 16

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Answers

by: HonorGodPosted on 2009-08-06 at 17:22:18ID: 25039176

If you are willing to use Python, there is a wonder library called BeautifulSoup that parses the HTML, and lets you easily search for stuff like you want.

http://www.python.org
http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/

by: zaarinPosted on 2009-08-06 at 18:01:39ID: 25039282

Sorry, no. It needs to be done in JavaScript at this point.

by: HonorGodPosted on 2009-08-06 at 20:07:24ID: 25039772

Are the elements that you have marked text, or some other document element?

by: zaarinPosted on 2009-08-06 at 20:17:49ID: 25039797

Plain text, though includes letters (upper and lowercase), digits and spaces. - Any characters that you would find in a persons contact details.

The URL contains "?" and "=" in addition to digits and letters.

For example:

<tr>
        <td valign="top"><a href="show_person.html?dn=cn%3DJoe%20Blogs"> <div class="list">Joe Blogs</div></a></td>
        <td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list"> Artist</div></td>
        <td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list"> 33778</div></td>
        <td width="110" valign="top"><div class="list"> Marketting</div></td>
        <td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list"> Transport</div></td>
        <td width="140" valign="top"><div class="list"> 30033778</div></td>
        <td width="220" valign="top"><div class="list"> 12 Flinders Way</div></td>
</tr>

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by: HonorGodPosted on 2009-08-07 at 05:11:07ID: 25041824

Does it have to be a RegExp?
Wouldn't it be easier to locate the table and then process the rows?

For example, something like this?

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Template</title>
<script type='text/javascript'>
  function field( id ) {
    var ele = document.getElementById( id );
    if ( !ele ) {
      alert( 'Specified element not found. id="' + id + '"' );
    }
    return ele;
  }
  
  function extract( id ) {
    var table = field ( id );
    if ( table ) {
      if ( table.nodeName == 'TABLE' ) {
        var tbody = table.getElementsByTagName( 'TBODY' )[ 0 ];
        var rows  = tbody.rows;
        for ( var r = 0; r < rows.length; r++ ) {
          var divs = rows[ r ].getElementsByTagName( 'DIV' );
          var data = [];
          for ( var d = 0; d < divs.length; d++ ) {
             data[ d ] = divs[ d ].innerHTML;
          }
          alert( 'Row #' + r + ' = ' + data );
        }
      } else {
        alert( 'Unexpected element type="' + table.nodeName + '"' );
      }
    }
  }
</script>
</head>
<body>
 
<table id='here' border='1'>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td valign="top"><a href="show_person.html?dn=cn%3DJoe%20Blogs"> <div class="list">Joe Blogs</div></a></td>
      <td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list"> Artist</div></td>
      <td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list"> 33778</div></td>
      <td width="110" valign="top"><div class="list"> Marketting</div></td>
      <td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list"> Transport</div></td>
      <td width="140" valign="top"><div class="list"> 30033778</div></td>
      <td width="220" valign="top"><div class="list"> 12 Flinders Way</div></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td valign="top"><a href="show_person.html?dn=cn%3DJoe%20Blogs"> <div class="list">Adam</div></a></td>
      <td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list"> Farmer </div></td>
      <td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list"> 00001 </div></td>
      <td width="110" valign="top"><div class="list"> Produce </div></td>
      <td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list"> Transport </div></td>
      <td width="220" valign="top"><div class="list"> Garden of Eden </div></td>
      <td width="140" valign="top"><div class="list"> 1 </div></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>
<input type='button' value='Extract' onclick='extract("here")'>
</body>
</html>

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by: zaarinPosted on 2009-08-08 at 23:18:46ID: 25053032

Sorry for the delay in replying. That may be possible, however, I wasn't aware that it's possible to get elements from a string variable in the same method as getting it from the page's DOM. I'll look into it further tomorrow.

The HTML is all within a string because I use a simple ColdFusion script (that acts as a proxy) to scrape an external page, then return the HTML as a string. I then plan to use JavaScript to extract the relevant contact details from that HTML string and append them onto the page.

The other issue is the page I'm scraping isn't well formed HTML, though hopefully it won't be a problem as I'm simply planning on searching for items (div.list and the a@href immediately prior to the first div.list in the tr) within the HTML page/string.

by: HonorGodPosted on 2009-08-09 at 06:13:44ID: 25054093

> I wasn't aware that it's possible to get elements from a string variable in the same method as getting it from the page's DOM.

It's not.

How do you expect to get the HTML into a JavaScript string variable?

by: zaarinPosted on 2009-08-09 at 16:47:23ID: 25056521

I'm using jQuery's $get function as shown below, via a server side script acting as a proxy, to allow me to grab the external HTML and include in on the current page.

The "proxy.cfm" uses the "urltarget" to scrape the relevant page (because JavaScript can't do it itself due to browser cross-domain security), and it then returns the page content which gets assigned to the variable "data", which I then assign as a new variable "rawHTML".

	$.get('/_assets/scripts/proxy.cfm?urltarget=' + searchString, function(data){
		var rawHTML = data;
	});

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by: HonorGodPosted on 2009-08-09 at 19:05:12ID: 25056769

ooh. ok.

Something like this then?

<html>
<body>
 
<script type="text/javascript">
var text = '';
text += '<tr>\n';
text += '  <td valign="top"><a href="{URL}"> <div class="list">{NAME}<\/div><\/a><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list"> {POSITION}<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list"> {EXTENSION}<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="110" valign="top"><div class="list"> {UNIT}<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list"> {AGENCY}<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="140" valign="top"><div class="list"> {PHONE}<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="220" valign="top"><div class="list"> {ADDRESS}<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '<\/tr>\n';
text += '<tr>\n';
text += '  <td valign="top"><a href="{URL}"> <div class="list">Joe<\/div><\/a><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list"> Janitor<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list"> x1234<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="110" valign="top"><div class="list"> J1<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list"> CIA<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="140" valign="top"><div class="list"> 800-555-1212<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="220" valign="top"><div class="list"> 127.0.0.1<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '<\/tr>\n';
 
var info = text.split( '\n' );
var L = info.length;
var itemRE = /^.*"list">([^<]+)</;
for ( var i = 0; i < L; i++ ) {
  var line = info[ i ];
  if ( itemRE.test( line ) ) {
    document.write( i + ': "' + RegExp.$1 + '"<br>' );
  }
}
</script>
 
</body>
</html>

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by: zaarinPosted on 2009-08-10 at 18:48:39ID: 25065625

Yes. That looks much closer to what I want.

The end result is I want a 2 dimensional array containing the contacts details, for example:

Array[10][7], with an example of one row of the array containing:

[url, name, position, extension, unit, agency, phone, address]

Is it possible to have the same regular expression match the URL in the a@href preceding the first div.list containing the {name}, or do I need to do a separate RegEx?

by: HonorGodPosted on 2009-08-10 at 19:43:55ID: 25065835

I presume that you mean the optional URL. Right?
What if no href attribute exists?

by: HonorGodPosted on 2009-08-10 at 19:44:54ID: 25065838

ooh. I think I see.
The href attribute is on the first line in the group...

Are there a fixed number of lines in the group?

Is it always the same?

by: zaarinPosted on 2009-08-10 at 20:04:58ID: 25065900

Yes. I believe it always has the 7 lines within the group (within the <tr></tr>). The information would be outputted from a database somewhere, so I don't imagine the number of lines or elements would change.

The href attribute is always present. The others are also always present, though they may be empty.

by: HonorGodPosted on 2009-08-11 at 04:27:52ID: 25067796

Something like this perhaps?

<html>
<body>
 
<script type="text/javascript">
var text = '';
text += '<tr>\n';
text += '  <td valign="top"><a href="{URL}"> <div class="list">{NAME}<\/div><\/a><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list"> {POSITION}<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list"> {EXTENSION}<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="110" valign="top"><div class="list"> {UNIT}<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list"> {AGENCY}<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="140" valign="top"><div class="list"> {PHONE}<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="220" valign="top"><div class="list"> {ADDRESS}<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '<\/tr>\n';
text += '<tr>\n';
text += '  <td valign="top"><a href="{URL}"> <div class="list">Joe<\/div><\/a><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list"> Janitor<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list"> x1234<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="110" valign="top"><div class="list"> J1<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="80" valign="top"><div class="list"> CIA<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="140" valign="top"><div class="list"> 800-555-1212<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '  <td width="220" valign="top"><div class="list"> 127.0.0.1<\/div><\/td>\n';
text += '<\/tr>\n';
 
var info   = text.split( '\n' );
var L      = info.length;
var hrefRE = /href="([^"]+)"/;
var itemRE = /^.*"list">([^<]+)</;
var data   = [];
var href   = '';
for ( var i = 0; i < L; i++ ) {
  var line = info[ i ];
  if ( hrefRE.test( line ) ) {
    if ( href ) {
      document.write( 'href="' + href + '"  data=' + data + '<br>' );
    }
    href = RegExp.$1;
    data = [];
  }
  if ( itemRE.test( line ) ) {
    data.push( RegExp.$1 );
  }
}
if ( href ) {
  document.write( 'href="' + href + '"  data=' + data + '<br>' );
}
</script>
 
</body>
</html>

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by: zaarinPosted on 2009-08-12 at 19:17:22ID: 31615137

Question essentially solved what I wanted. Only some minor rework was needed to tie everything in with my existing code.

Much appreciated

by: HonorGodPosted on 2009-08-13 at 03:48:22ID: 25086879

I'm happy to have been able to help.

Thanks for the grade & points.

Good luck & have a great day.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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RegEx to extract text from HTML elements and populate an array

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