how would I screen scrape a page like this using file_get_contents and preg_match?

Question

I have a page with many HTML lines like this:

<ul><li><a href='a_silly_link_that_changes_each_line.php'>the_content_i_need</a></li></ul>

Now as you can see, theres a link in that line, which unfortunately changes on each line.

So I need a way to scrape the content in that line, without letting the link get in the way.

I've also tried to scrape like this: .php'>(*.)</a></li></ul> but thats no good, as it returns allot of unwanted content.

Also, because there are many lines on the page that i need to take the content from, could i just loop through, somehow?

I'm using preg_match and file_get_contents but am open to other suggestions. :)

Answer 1

Try using

$match = array();
preg_match_all( '~\\.php>(.*?)</a></li></ul>~', file_get_contents( $filename), $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER)`.

This will match all links inside your file. *? means "match 0-inf characters but as little characters as possible" (greedy killer) so you won't be getting any unvanted content.

Answer 2

From: PHP Parse HTML code

Use something like:

   $str = '<ul><li><a src="test.html">linky</a></li></ul>';
   $DOM = new DOMDocument;
   $DOM->loadHTML($str);
   $items = $DOM->getElementsByTagName('ul');
    for($i =0;$i<$items->length;$i++){
        $ul = $items->item($i);
        $li=$ul->firstChild;
        if($li->nodeName=='li' && $li->firstChild->nodeName=='a'){
            //do something with $li->firstChild->nodeValue 

        }
    }

In this case, $li->firstChild->nodeValue will be linky.

That should do it :)