bash command to get href value down a specific class value

Question

I'm new in shell scripting so I need some help. By shell script I need to get the value of a href property from a html filtered by the class.

eg:

<a class="other class" href="value I don't need"></a> <a class="some class" href="url I need"></a>

In this case I need the href value of the a tag that got the class "some class". I need to put the value into a variable, requires to use sed o grep, I'm not good with reggex at all so I need your help plz.

[Don't use regex to parse HTML](http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/1032785) — jordanm, Jan 20 '15 at 22:41

cbreezier · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-22T00:37:53.277

1

An alternative way using sed and grep.

var=`grep 'class="some class"' <file> | sed -r 's/^.+href="([^"]+)".+$/\1/'`

First grep finds the right line, then the sed replaces the entire line with only the bracketed bit (which is the value of href).

Edit: if you have multiple <a> tags on one line, it gets a bit more tricky. If you can assume that the format of the tag is always like the examples, then you can try this:

var=`grep 'class="some class"' <file> | sed -r 's/^.+class="some class"\s+href="([^"]+)".+$/\1/'`

If you can't assume that (maybe sometimes the href comes before the class) then you're better off using an html parser - regex can't really parse html properly.

edited Jan 22 '15 at 00:37

answered Jan 20 '15 at 23:05

cbreezier

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where I have to put the input file? – dakairus Jan 21 '15 at 00:42
I tried but show blank results, the input file is a html file – dakairus Jan 21 '15 at 23:48
ah sorry, it throughs blank result because in the line exist 2 tag, that could break de process? – dakairus Jan 22 '15 at 00:23
@dakairus No, it's because this command assigns the output to the variable called `var` because in your question you said that you needed to put it in a variable. After executing this line, execute `echo "$var"` to see your variable. – cbreezier Jan 22 '15 at 00:31
@dakairus although actually, if you have two `` tags in one line it would cause issues. You won't get a blank result but you could get the wrong result since the first `grep` just finds the line and the second `sed` extracts the first `href` property it sees. – cbreezier Jan 22 '15 at 00:34
Your are right, sorry the issue was a because the "" '' characters in the body of the html, works like charm :) – dakairus Jan 22 '15 at 00:43

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 20 '15 at 22:49

0

Here is one way:

awk -F'href="' '/class="some class/ {split($2,a,"\"");print a[1]}' file
url I need

answered Jan 20 '15 at 22:49

Jotne

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jaekid · Answer 3 · 2015-01-20T23:57:49.380

0

Use grep 'some class'|sed -n 's/.*href="$.*$".*/\1/p'

$ cat aaa
<a class="other class" href="value I don't need"></a>
<a class="some class" href="url I need"></a>

$ cat aaa|grep 'some class'|sed -n 's/.*href="\(.*\)".*/\1/p'
url I need

edited Jan 20 '15 at 23:57

answered Jan 20 '15 at 23:45

jaekid

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bash command to get href value down a specific class value

3 Answers3