2

I have being messing about with DOM XPath stuff all day - reading around and tearing my hair out! So, last resort, ask you guys - the pros!

What I'm trying to do is retrieve (in an array) of all the titles of threads here.

I am trying to use XPath to do it (unless someone can tell me a better way); currently I am just trying to get just 1 title to check whether my code is working (clearly not!...)

I'm using:

$list3 = $xpath3
  ->evaluate("//a[contains(@style, 'font-weight:bold') and 
    contains(@href, 'showthread.php?t=3499047')]");

However nothing is getting retrieved

isNaN1247
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cud_programmer
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  • Threads that you've read (ie followed links) are no longer bold, is that the problem? – AakashM Dec 16 '11 at 15:24
  • I think the expression is tight, can you try to remove the style clause? And the href comparison change to `?t=3499047` without the path – ajreal Dec 16 '11 at 15:24

3 Answers3

2

The reason you are not getting any results is that there is no <a> elements that satisfy both conditions.

These are the links containing "3499047" in @href:

<a href="showthread.php?s=9bc55ab5990282a5353fb20d505d577e&amp;t=3499047" id="thread_title_3499047">Tesco misprices and discussion (Thread 12)</a>
<a href="showthread.php?s=9bc55ab5990282a5353fb20d505d577e&amp;t=3499047">1</a>
<a href="showthread.php?s=9bc55ab5990282a5353fb20d505d577e&amp;t=3499047&amp;page=2">2</a>
<a href="showthread.php?s=9bc55ab5990282a5353fb20d505d577e&amp;t=3499047&amp;page=3">3</a>
<a href="showthread.php?s=9bc55ab5990282a5353fb20d505d577e&amp;t=3499047&amp;page=110">Last Page</a>
<a href="member.php?s=9bc55ab5990282a5353fb20d505d577e&amp;find=lastposter&amp;t=3499047" rel="nofollow">ExiledCockney</a>
<a href="misc.php?do=whoposted&amp;t=3499047" onclick="who(3499047); return false;">2,184</a>
<a rel="shadowbox;width=732;height=527;player=iframe;" href="wow.php?t=3499047" target="_blank" style="display: block; width: 100%; height: 100%; cursor: pointer;">
        <div style="width: 100%; height: 100%;  background-image: url('http://images2.moneysavingexpert.com/images/forum_style_2/misc//wow_big_faint_grey.gif');">
            <div style="padding: 12px 0px 0px 0px;">
                <strong>3</strong>
            </div>
        </div>
    </a>

As you can see, none of them contain "'font-weight:bold'" in a style attribute.

In case the markup on the page has elements with your desired combination when you view it in a browser, they might have been added via javascript. DOM will not run any JavaScript, so you have to check the markup fetched with DOM.

Gordon
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  • Ahh, yes, I get a completely different HTML source. It will be because I am logged in - hence why I'm seeing bold font. Thanks! That really is a doh moment. – cud_programmer Dec 16 '11 at 15:56
  • I now have it working (using id attribute) - thank you very much! Another quick question - is there any way to pull the value of t=xxxxxxxx ? e.g. above it's t=3499047 – cud_programmer Dec 16 '11 at 16:18
  • @cud use `parse_url` on the @href value. If there is multiple arguments in the query string, use `parse_str`. – Gordon Dec 16 '11 at 17:13
0

Make sure that DOM isn't barfing on the html. it's VERY picky about malformed html. See what a ->saveHTML() call produces immediately after loading the page. If you get out something different/truncated, your input is malformed and will have to be cleaned up first.

Marc B
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I took a look at that html and I don't see any links with that href that also have style="font-weight: bold;". I actually dono't see any bold links on the page. Anyway, when I remove that condition I get five DOMElements from evaluate().

Explosion Pills
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