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chrisbrayFlag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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What is the best way to extract and process information from an HTML email?

I get notices from a courier company in HTML format, and in that email are one or more table rows that contain information about a failed delivery.  I would like to pick out that information and use it to automatically send my own email to the person whose delivery has failed giving them the same information but pulling their details from my own database.

Can anyone suggest the best way of going about this?

Example HTML follows:

==================================================

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC -//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN>
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META content=text/html;charset=iso-8859-1
http-equiv=Content-Type>
<style>

a:link  {text-decoration: none; }
a:hover {text-decoration: underline;}

.notes
{
    padding:        3px;
    margin:            10px;
    border:            1px solid #000000;
    background-color:                #779580;
    color:                #FFFFFF;        
    font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
    font-size: 11px;
}
h1
{

        font-family:       Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
        font-size:         16px;
        font-weight:       bold;
        text-align:        left;
        color:             #000000;
        margin:            5px;
        margin-top:        5px;
        margin-bottom:     15px;
        padding:           3px;
        border-top:        1px solid #00662F;
        border-bottom:     2px solid #00662F;
}

.cellpalegreenb {
background-color: #C8F6A0;
font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 12px;
font-weight: bold;
color: #000000;
padding: 5px;
}

.cellpalegreen {
background-color: #C8F6A0;
font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 10px;
color: #000000;
padding: 5px;
}

.cellpaleyellowb {
background-color: #F7F8B8;
font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 12px;
font-weight: bold;
color: #000000;
padding: 5px;
}

.cellpaleyellow {
background-color: #F7F8B8;
font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 10px;
color: #000000;
padding: 5px;
}

.cellwhite {
background-color: #FFFFFF;
font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 10px;
color: #000000;
padding: 5px;
}

.tableheader
{
    background-color:  #E7E5BB;
    padding:           2px;
    margin:            0px;
    font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
    font-size:         13px;
    font-weight:       bold;
   
}

.titleBox {
border-color: #FFFFFF black;
background-color: #23A700;
font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 20px;
color: #FFFFFF;
border-style: solid;
border-top-width: 1px;
border-right-width: 0px;
border-bottom-width: 1px;
border-left-width: 0px;
padding: 5px;
}

.tabletop {
 border-color: #FFFFFF black;
 background-color: #23A700;
 font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
 font-size: 15px;
 color: #FFFFFF;
 border-style: solid;
 border-top-width: 1px;
 border-right-width: 1px;
 border-bottom-width: 1px;
 border-left-width: 1px;
 padding: 5px;
}

.BodyBlack {
 font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
 font-size: 11px;
 color: #000000;
}

.BodyWhite {
 font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
 font-size: 11px;
 color: #FFFFFF;
}

.carded {
 font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
 font-size: 10px;
 color: #FF0000;
}

.collection {
 font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
 font-size: 10px;
 color: #099000;
 }

.international {
 font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
 font-size: 10px;
 color: #CC33CC;
}

.delivery {
 font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
 font-size: 10px;
 color: #000099;
}

.refused {
 font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
 font-size: 10px;
 color: #4A809F;
}

.alert {
 font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
 font-size: 11px;
 color: #FF0000;
 font-weight: bold;
}

.footer {
 font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
 font-size: 10px;
 text-align: center;
 color: #3F874C;
}

.copyright {
 font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
 font-size: 10px;
 color: #3F874C;
 position: absolute;
 bottom: 10px;
 }

</style>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<table cellpadding=5 cellspacing=0 border=0 align=center WIDTH=100%>
<tr><td><h1>MailTrack Advice</h1></td>
<td width=178><a href="http://www.city-link.co.uk"><img src=cid:image1.230506.030303 alt="flying c" height=50 width=172 border=0></a></td>
</tr></table>
<DIV class=notes>Please find below the messages generated on your deliveries since your last mail at 13:50   today.
<BR>All of these messages were received in the last 60       minutes. <BR>
<BR>New Messages Received: 2</div><BR>
<TABLE cellpadding=2 cellspacing=2 border=0 align=CENTER <TR><TD class=tableheader>Account No.</TD>
<TD class=tableheader>Our Ref</TD>
<TD class=tableheader>Your Ref</TD>
<TD class=tableheader>Del Addr</TD>
<TD class=tableheader>Message (Click message header to REPLY)</TD>
</TR>
<TR><td  class=cellpaleyellow>875093</td>
<td  class=cellpaleyellow>PS906873</td>
<td  class=cellpaleyellow>LD15255</td>
<td  class=cellpaleyellow>MICHAEL BETTS<br>19 STRATHBURN GARDENS<br>INVERURIE<br><br><br>AB51 4RY<br></td>
<TD class=cellpaleyellow>
<TABLE cellpadding=2 cellspacing=0 border=0 width=100%
<TR><TD width=50%><a class=carded href=mailto:hailsham@city-link.co.uk?subject=Instructions%20for%20Job:%20PS906873%2014:22%200502 PREMISES CLOSED - TIME CARDED>
PREMISES CLOSED - TIME CARDED  (1) </a>
</TD>
<TD  width=50% class=carded>Door Description: BROWN DOOR<BR>
Carded Time: 14:22<BR>
LOG: 4333062<BR>
</TD></TR></TABLE></TD></TR><TR><td  class=cellpaleyellow>875093</td>
<td  class=cellpaleyellow>PS906867</td>
<td  class=cellpaleyellow>LD15262</td>
<td  class=cellpaleyellow>HIGHGATE STATIONERS & PRINTERS<br>5A CROGSLAND ROAD<br>LONDON<br><br><br>NW1 8AY<br></td>
<TD class=cellpaleyellow>
<TABLE cellpadding=2 cellspacing=0 border=0 width=100%
<TR><TD width=50%><a class=carded href=mailto:hailsham@city-link.co.uk?subject=Instructions%20for%20Job:%20PS906867%2016:18%200502 PREMISES CLOSED - TIME CARDED>
PREMISES CLOSED - TIME CARDED  (1) </a>
</TD>
<TD  width=50% class=carded>Door Description: GREEN<BR>
Carded Time: 16:18<BR>
LOG: 3821551<BR>
</TD></TR></TABLE></TD></TR></TABLE><BR><BR>
<CENTER><FONT class=footer>MailTrack V1.60 (04/05/2006) &copy; Initial City Link 2001-2006</FONT></CENTER>

<BR>
_____________________________________________________________________<BR>
The information contained in this e-mail is intended only for the<BR>
individual to whom it is addressed. It may contain privileged and<BR>
confidential information. If you have received this message in<BR>
error or there are any problems, please notify the sender<BR>
immediately and delete the message from your computer. The<BR>
unauthorised use, disclosure, copying or alteration of this<BR>
message is forbidden. This message has been checked for all<BR>
known viruses by Initial City Link prior to sending.<BR>
</BODY>
</HTML>

==============================================================

In this example two parcel deliveries have failed, and I want to extract the two sets of information and email them directly to my customer.

Any advice gratefully received.

Chris Bray.


Avatar of TheRealLoki
TheRealLoki
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Ideally, You should use an HTML parser.
Unfortunately, the only "free" one I've seen is in the Jedi component (TjvHTMLParser)
However, this does not seem to work as simply as you would like.

If you expect the html to *always* be in the format you describe above, it is simple enough to write your own routine to get the data out, using POS()
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TheRealLoki
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