Parse HTML with PHP

Question

I have a problem, I have to make a Parser of a Web page. The structure is as follows:

 <TABLE WIDTH=80%>

<tr><td colspan=7><BR><BR></td></tr>
<TR>
<Td colspan=7><FONT FACE="arial" align=left><B><A NAME="TEST">Anagrafica</B><br></TH>
</TR>
<tr><td colspan=7></td></tr>
<TR>
 <TH ALIGN=LEFT ><FONT COLOR="#AA0000" FACE="arial" SIZE="2">Name</FONT></TH>
  <TH></TH>
  <TH ALIGN=LEFT ><FONT COLOR="#AA0000" FACE="arial" SIZE="2">Surname</FONT></TH>
  <TH></TH>
  <TH ALIGN=LEFT ><FONT COLOR="#AA0000" FACE="arial" SIZE="2">ID</FONT></TH>
  <TH></TH>
 <TH ALIGN=LEFT ><FONT COLOR="#AA0000" FACE="arial" SIZE="2">Code</FONT></TH>
 </TR>

 <tr>
 <TD COLSPAN="7">
 <HR SIZE="1" NOSHADE></TD>
 <TR>

 <TR>
   <TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="TOP" NOWRAP><FONT SIZE="1" FACE="arial">Mario</FONT>     </TD>
   <TD WIDTH="10"><VALIGN="TOP"><FONT SIZE="1" FACE="arial">&#160;</FONT></TD>
   <TD ALIGN="CENTER" VALIGN="TOP" NOWRAP><P ALIGN="CENTER"><FONT SIZE="1" FACE="arial"> Mario </FONT></TD>
   <TD WIDTH="10"><VALIGN="TOP"><FONT SIZE="1" FACE="arial">&#160;</FONT></TD>
   <TD ALIGN="LEFT" VALIGN="TOP" NOWRAP><FONT SIZE="1" FACE="arial">1</FONT></TD>
   <TD WIDTH="10"><VALIGN="TOP"><FONT SIZE="1" FACE="arial">a</FONT></TD>
   <TD ALIGN="LEFT" VALIGN="TOP" NOWRAP><FONT SIZE="1" FACE="arial">132</FONT></TD>

 <TR>
   <TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="TOP" NOWRAP><FONT SIZE="1" FACE="arial">Mario</FONT>     </TD>
   <TD WIDTH="10"><VALIGN="TOP"><FONT SIZE="1" FACE="arial">&#160;</FONT></TD>
   <TD ALIGN="CENTER" VALIGN="TOP" NOWRAP><P ALIGN="CENTER"><FONT SIZE="1" FACE="arial"> Mario </FONT></TD>
   <TD WIDTH="10"><VALIGN="TOP"><FONT SIZE="1" FACE="arial">&#160;</FONT></TD>
   <TD ALIGN="LEFT" VALIGN="TOP" NOWRAP><FONT SIZE="1" FACE="arial">1</FONT></TD>
   <TD WIDTH="10"><VALIGN="TOP"><FONT SIZE="1" FACE="arial">a</FONT></TD>
   <TD ALIGN="LEFT" VALIGN="TOP" NOWRAP><FONT SIZE="1" FACE="arial">132</FONT></TD>

 <TR>

I want to take the data of the 4 columns using this script

$start = strpos($content,'<Td colspan=7><FONT FACE="arial" align=left><B><A NAME=');
if ($start == TRUE) {
    $end = strpos($content,'</TABLE>',$start) + 8;
    $table = substr($content,$start,$end-$start);
    preg_match_all("|<TD(.*)</TD>|U",$table,$rows);

    $x = 1;
    $counter = 1;
    echo "<table class=\"TFtable\">";
    foreach ($rows[0] as $row){
        if ((strpos($row,'<TR')===false)){
            preg_match_all("|<TD(.*)</TD>|U",$row,$cells);
            $status[$x] = strip_tags($cells[0][0]);
            $x = $x+1;
            $counter = $counter+1;
        }
        if ($counter % 7 == 1) {
            echo "<tr><td>{$status[2]} - {$status[4]} <br> {$status[6]} - {$status[1]}</td></tr>\n";
            $x = 1;
        }
    } 
    echo "</table>";

In this way, however, the last field $ status [1] I will appear in the second row as if indeed it were part of line 2:

example

Mario Rossi 1 213

Mario Bianchi 2 324

Displaying

Mario Rossi 1

Mario Bianchi 2 213

Where am I wrong?

Simple: Use [DOM](http://php.net/dom). You should NOT be manually parsing html — Marc B, Nov 25 '14 at 14:53

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:26

1

Try looking into DOMDocument instead of regexing the HTML. With loadHTML() you can let PHP parse the HTML. Look at HTML DOM Document parsing for an example.

edited May 23 '17 at 10:26

Community

1
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answered Nov 25 '14 at 14:53

RichardBernards

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 25 '14 at 15:09

If you're actually trying to build a parser, you probably don't want to use a pre-built HTML/DOM parser. If this is the case, you'll probably want to follow these steps:

tokenize your input (you can use regex for this part)
process your tokens, determining each one's meaning as they come.
- you might want to look into so-called "recursive descent parsers"
- each token may change the meaning of the following token
- you may need to look at the next token in line without processing it
return your output, most likely in the form of an object that represents a DOM tree

You'll probably need to look into the formal definition of the language to determine what kinds of expressions may follow each other. For instance, the definition of a start tag likely looks something like the following (though this isn't a formal definition, and may contain errors):

'<' + tagName + attributes list + '>'

Again, this is probably wildly inaccurate, and you'll want to look into the formal definition of the language.

The w3c HTML global structure document might be a good place to start.

Parse HTML with PHP

2 Answers2