Counting li items from a html file using php

Question

I have an HTML file that contains many many JUST "li" tags no head and body tag and any thing else. I want to count them using PHP. how can I do this?

However, I tried this:

$dom = new DOMDocument();
DOMDocument::loadHTML($tmp_file);
$count = $dom->getElementsByTagName("li");
echo count($count);

but it returns 1.

Here is the $tmp_file (I don't know how many is them will be retrieved (may be hundred of them) but I just add 5 of them to here):

<li >
    <a target="_blank" class="small-news-link" href="http://www.varzesh3.com/news/1426832/میروسلاو-ژیوکو-سرمربی-تیم-والیبال-سایپا-شد" target="_blank" title="میروسلاو ژیوکو سرمربی تیم والیبال سایپا شد">میروسلاو ژیوکو سرمربی تیم والیبال سایپا شد</a>
</li>
<li >
    <a target="_blank" class="small-news-link" href="http://www.varzesh3.com/news/1426824/فدرر-از-نظر-فیزیکی-شرایط-سال-قبل-را-ندارم" target="_blank" title="فدرر: از نظر فیزیکی شرایط سال قبل را ندارم">فدرر: از نظر فیزیکی شرایط سال قبل را ندارم</a>
</li>
<li >
    <a target="_blank" class="small-news-link" href="http://www.varzesh3.com/news/1426817/شکست-تیم-&#171;الف&#187;-والیبال-ساحلی-ایران-مقابل-هلند" target="_blank" title="شکست تیم &#171;الف&#187; والیبال ساحلی ایران مقابل هلند">شکست تیم &#171;الف&#187; والیبال ساحلی ایران مقابل هلند</a>
</li>
<li class="news-video">
    <a target="_blank" class="small-news-link" href="http://www.varzesh3.com/news/1426815/5-حرکت-دیدنی-در-لیگ-تابستان-NBA؛-96-04-21" target="_blank" title="5 حرکت دیدنی در لیگ تابستان NBA؛ 96/04/21">5 حرکت دیدنی در لیگ تابستان NBA؛ 96/04/21</a>
</li>
<li >
    <a target="_blank" class="small-news-link" href="http://www.varzesh3.com/news/1426813/معرفی-هیات-مدیره-جدید-صندوق-حمایت-از-پیشکسوتان" target="_blank" title="معرفی هیات مدیره جدید صندوق حمایت از پیشکسوتان">معرفی هیات مدیره جدید صندوق حمایت از پیشکسوتان</a>
</li>
<li >
    <a target="_blank" class="small-news-link" href="http://www.varzesh3.com/news/1426808/رحیمی،-یزدانی-و-قاسمی-در-رده-اول-تا-سوم-جهان" target="_blank" title="رحیمی، یزدانی و قاسمی در رده اول تا سوم جهان">رحیمی، یزدانی و قاسمی در رده اول تا سوم جهان</a>
</li>
<li >
    <a target="_blank" class="small-news-link" href="http://www.varzesh3.com/news/1426792/جوکوویچ-منتظر-رویارویی-با-بردیچ-هستم" target="_blank" title="جوکوویچ: منتظر رویارویی با بردیچ هستم">جوکوویچ: منتظر رویارویی با بردیچ هستم</a>
</li>

Please update your question with any additional info/code instead of in a comment. — M. Eriksson, Jul 12 '17 at 08:10
Please check your error log (or better yet, turn on display errors, here's how: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5438060/showing-all-errors-and-warnings) and check if you get a bunch of warnings when trying to parse the content. — M. Eriksson, Jul 12 '17 at 08:21

score 8 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 12 '17 at 00:48

You're close. I think what you're looking for is the following :

$dom = new \DOMDocument();
@$dom->loadHTML($html); // or @$dom->loadHTMLFile($filename); if providing filename rather than actual HTML content

$count = $dom->getElementsByTagName('li')->length;
echo $count;

Depending on your value of $tmp_file you would use either loadHTML() if it contains the actual content, or loadHTMLFile() if it contains the filename. (Note that these methods should not be called statically.)

The method getElementsByTagName() returns a DOMNodeList object with a length property containing the number of found nodes.

You can try the code here.

This DOM parsing approach is preferable to string or regular expression searches since it is designed to account for the many variable ways that HTML may be acceptably written (ie. inconsistent spacing, attribute order).

as said above , length in not works it should be length() , by the way , thanx man, i'll post my answer her as soon as possible — amdev, Sep 12 '17 at 05:52
It should indeed be `->length` and not `->length()` since `length` is a _property_ of `DOMNodeList`, not a _method_, and properties are accessed without the parentheses. If you're still not getting the desired output, than the issue is elsewhere, possibly the use of `loadHTML()` instead of `loadHTMLFile()`? — Francis Eytan Dortort, Sep 12 '17 at 12:13

always-a-learner · Answer 2 · 2017-09-16T09:15:53.827

5

You can do a very simple Substring Count for <li> (or -li-) on that string and it would return the number of items. See here: function.substr-count

$count = substr_count($html,'<li>'); //where $html holds your piece of HTML.

edited Sep 16 '17 at 09:15

answered Jul 12 '17 at 08:30

always-a-learner

3,671
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81

1

still returning 0 – amdev Jul 12 '17 at 08:32
1

In the example the OP posted in a comment, it's actually `
` (with an extra space).

M. Eriksson

Jul 12 '17 at 08:37

1

still zero buddy (with extra space)! – amdev Jul 12 '17 at 08:40

2

@Er.Ellison `substr_count($html,'

');` works perfectly for me when I try with the HTML in your question. Of course, you need to change `$html` to the variable that actually holds your HTML data. Try it: https://3v4l.org/daX97

– M. Eriksson Jul 12 '17 at 08:43

J Shubham · Answer 3 · 2017-07-12T08:52:26.027

4

You were close.

Try this:

$count = $dom->getElementsByTagName("li")->length;

And change this echo count($count); to echo $count

edited Jul 12 '17 at 08:52

answered Jul 12 '17 at 08:10

J Shubham

609
7
21

1

it does not recognises the length – amdev Jul 12 '17 at 08:14
1

Sorry, it was `->length`. – J Shubham Jul 12 '17 at 08:14
1

this is getting funny , – amdev Jul 12 '17 at 08:15
it return 0 this time :))))) – amdev Jul 12 '17 at 08:16
@Er.Ellison Please check my comment for your question. – M. Eriksson Jul 12 '17 at 08:19
It is returning 0 because you are trying to count non-array variable. – J Shubham Jul 12 '17 at 09:02

Alex Ruiz · Answer 4 · 2017-07-12T08:26:01.183

3

Well, first of all, loadHTML loads from an HTML inside a string. If $tmp_file is the name of the file, you should use loadHTMLFile.

Also, loadHTML is not static, so you need to do $dom->loadHTML($tmp_file);

Now the answer to the question.

What getElementsByTagName() returns is a DOMNodeList. As an object, probably the count() function will just say 1, but DOMNodeList has a property called length. If you query only li elements and then read the length it will give the quantity of li elements.

As a test:

$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadHTML("<li>test 1</li><li>test 2</li><li>test 3</li><li>test 4</li>");
$count = $dom->getElementsByTagName("li");
echo $count->length; //Prints 4

Inside the <ul> I've set up four <li> elements.

edited Jul 12 '17 at 08:26

answered Jul 12 '17 at 08:16

Alex Ruiz

415
2
8

1

the $tmp_file is retrieving data from a link and puts it to a tmp file using file_put_contents , so , so far i have a html file that contains JUST "li"tags in it (even whenever i tried to load the tmp file in browser , it just shows some crazy characters to me) , it does NOT have any body or html tag – amdev Jul 12 '17 at 08:21
1

@Er.Ellison it doesn't matter, it's just an example. You can put only `
` tags and it works. I'll change my example to reflect your case.

Alex Ruiz

Jul 12 '17 at 08:25

1

believe me i'm trying as u said but it return 0 , here is the reurning result : – amdev Jul 12 '17 at 08:28

1

u see the zero in first that the result of echo $count->length; – amdev Jul 12 '17 at 08:29

Can you post what `echo $tmp_file;` shows? Just to discard things. Also, are you using `$dom->loadHTML() `? – Alex Ruiz Jul 12 '17 at 08:32

@Er.Ellison Check what `$dom->loadHTML($tmp_file);` returns. If it fails because can not parse it, it should return `false`. If that happens and you can't modify your input to fix the html syntax errors, we should find another way to solve this problem. Maybe with regular expression. I'll try and see. – Alex Ruiz Jul 12 '17 at 10:59

@Er.Ellison I did a test here - http://sandbox.onlinephpfunctions.com/code/5f83d4e5fd24e73c66956b6fcc4dfe0f9b0fa6a1 There are some warnings, but it show 7 `

`elements at the end. It should work with the data you posted.

– Alex Ruiz Jul 12 '17 at 11:05

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 11 '17 at 21:21

3

Could you try something like this? $url being the path to your html file?

$data = file($url);
$count = null;
foreach($data as $line){
    if (strpos($line,'<li')){
        ++$count;
    }
}

echo($count);
exit();

answered Sep 11 '17 at 21:21

Blaise

330
1
11

No bro, I think there is a typo in your answer, at '
', thank you for responding to my question, I have solved this problem with a another genius way, sorry about that I forgot to post my answer here, I'm currently working on a very serious project and I just came over to stack overflow when I can, by the way first of all thanks to Blaise (my man), second of all, I'll post my answer here as soon as I can! Thank you very much guys!

amdev

Sep 11 '17 at 21:44

1

Haha! Glad you found an answer. I intentionally left off the closing of the opening

tag due to the space in the code!

– Blaise Sep 11 '17 at 21:56

score 3 · Answer 6 · answered Sep 13 '17 at 04:35

If you are sure all the lines are the same you do not even need to check for the <li> tag. Just do a quick count of the number of lines in the file and divide by 3:

$total_lines = count(file($html_file));
$num_list_items = $total_lines / 3;

$html_file should just be the path to the file. You do not need to parse the HTML so no need to create a new DOMDocument. This is much more efficient, but only if you know for sure that the entire file is formatted in this way.

score 3 · Answer 7 · answered Sep 13 '17 at 19:52

You just use the following code for get the li count from html page data

 $html_page_data='<li >
            <a target="_blank" class="small-news-link" href="http://www.varzesh3.com/news/1426832/میروسلاو-ژیوکو-سرمربی-تیم-والیبال-سایپا-شد" target="_blank" title="میروسلاو ژیوکو سرمربی تیم والیبال سایپا شد">میروسلاو ژیوکو سرمربی تیم والیبال سایپا شد</a>
        </li>
        <li >
            <a target="_blank" class="small-news-link" href="http://www.varzesh3.com/news/1426824/فدرر-از-نظر-فیزیکی-شرایط-سال-قبل-را-ندارم" target="_blank" title="فدرر: از نظر فیزیکی شرایط سال قبل را ندارم">فدرر: از نظر فیزیکی شرایط سال قبل را ندارم</a>
        </li>
        <li >
            <a target="_blank" class="small-news-link" href="http://www.varzesh3.com/news/1426817/شکست-تیم-&#171;الف&#187;-والیبال-ساحلی-ایران-مقابل-هلند" target="_blank" title="شکست تیم &#171;الف&#187; والیبال ساحلی ایران مقابل هلند">شکست تیم &#171;الف&#187; والیبال ساحلی ایران مقابل هلند</a>
        </li>';
          $doc = new DOMDocument();
          $doc->loadHTML($html_page_data);
          libxml_clear_errors();
          $xpath = new DOMXPath($doc);
          $query = '//li'; //query pattern for find li
          $li_data= $xpath->query($query);
    echo  $li_data->length ; //output 3

score 3 · Answer 8 · answered Sep 13 '17 at 19:54

You may also use :

echo preg_match_all("~<li([^>]*)>~",file_get_contents("your_html_file")).PHP_EOL;

Test Results :

akshay@db-3325:/tmp$ cat file
<li >
    <a target="_blank" class="small-news-link" href="http://www.varzesh3.com/news/1426832/میروسلاو-ژیوکو-سرمربی-تیم-والیبال-سایپا-شد" target="_blank" title="میروسلاو ژیوکو سرمربی تیم والیبال سایپا شد">میروسلاو ژیوکو سرمربی تیم والیبال سایپا شد</a>
</li>
<li >
    <a target="_blank" class="small-news-link" href="http://www.varzesh3.com/news/1426824/فدرر-از-نظر-فیزیکی-شرایط-سال-قبل-را-ندارم" target="_blank" title="فدرر: از نظر فیزیکی شرایط سال قبل را ندارم">فدرر: از نظر فیزیکی شرایط سال قبل را ندارم</a>
</li>
<li >
    <a target="_blank" class="small-news-link" href="http://www.varzesh3.com/news/1426817/شکست-تیم-&#171;الف&#187;-والیبال-ساحلی-ایران-مقابل-هلند" target="_blank" title="شکست تیم &#171;الف&#187; والیبال ساحلی ایران مقابل هلند">شکست تیم &#171;الف&#187; والیبال ساحلی ایران مقابل هلند</a>
</li>
<li class="news-video">
    <a target="_blank" class="small-news-link" href="http://www.varzesh3.com/news/1426815/5-حرکت-دیدنی-در-لیگ-تابستان-NBA؛-96-04-21" target="_blank" title="5 حرکت دیدنی در لیگ تابستان NBA؛ 96/04/21">5 حرکت دیدنی در لیگ تابستان NBA؛ 96/04/21</a>
</li>
<li >
    <a target="_blank" class="small-news-link" href="http://www.varzesh3.com/news/1426813/معرفی-هیات-مدیره-جدید-صندوق-حمایت-از-پیشکسوتان" target="_blank" title="معرفی هیات مدیره جدید صندوق حمایت از پیشکسوتان">معرفی هیات مدیره جدید صندوق حمایت از پیشکسوتان</a>
</li>
<li >
    <a target="_blank" class="small-news-link" href="http://www.varzesh3.com/news/1426808/رحیمی،-یزدانی-و-قاسمی-در-رده-اول-تا-سوم-جهان" target="_blank" title="رحیمی، یزدانی و قاسمی در رده اول تا سوم جهان">رحیمی، یزدانی و قاسمی در رده اول تا سوم جهان</a>
</li>
<li >
    <a target="_blank" class="small-news-link" href="http://www.varzesh3.com/news/1426792/جوکوویچ-منتظر-رویارویی-با-بردیچ-هستم" target="_blank" title="جوکوویچ: منتظر رویارویی با بردیچ هستم">جوکوویچ: منتظر رویارویی با بردیچ هستم</a>
</li>


akshay@db-3325:/tmp$ php -r 'echo preg_match_all("~<li([^>]*)>~",file_get_contents("file")).PHP_EOL;'
7

score 3 · Answer 9 · answered Sep 14 '17 at 09:00

This works for me (putting your example HTML in a file called "index.html"):

<?php
$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadHTMLFile("index.html");
$count = $dom->getElementsByTagName("li");
printf("Count: %d\n", count($count));

Edit: Although, as has been said, you can skip the count():

$li_elems = $dom->getElementsByTagName("li");
printf("Count: %d\n", $li_elems->length);

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 05 '18 at 19:03

The point of that issue was that I just want to achieve that a tags and grab their link, and I just want to use parsing, but some times you should use your Intel i9 in your mind and think better, so instead of getting <li> tags I directly targeted <a> tags, and it works:

Here is the code:

$this->dom = new DOMDocument();
@$this->dom->loadHTMLfile($tmp_file);
$this->as = $this->dom->getElementsByTagName('a');
foreach($this->as as $a) { ...

and as each of this items were saved to the database, then I can't get count of them from the database with MySQL queries, that's it!

score 2 · Answer 11 · answered Sep 14 '17 at 10:30

2

You can use PHP Simple HTML DOM Parse: http://simplehtmldom.sourceforge.net/

echo count($html->find('li'));

answered Sep 14 '17 at 10:30

Salim Ibrohimi

1,351
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if its right for, please check it as correct answer ))) – Salim Ibrohimi Sep 15 '17 at 11:32

score 2 · Answer 12 · answered Sep 15 '17 at 08:40

2

I can hel you.

You should use this code:

$numberOfListItems= $domElement->getElementsByTagName("li")->length;

$numberOfListItems contains needed value

answered Sep 15 '17 at 08:40

Dmitriy Buteiko

624
1
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Counting li items from a html file using php

12 Answers12