Parsing HTML code with regex

Ruby
1

I’m trying to parse through some html code and count the number of times
a match happens. The file is a large table with a ton of

and <tr
‘something’>. There are no spaces in the file. I’m trying to count and
print each and <tr ‘something’>.

I haven’t even gotten to counting my matches. I’m still working on
matching with

or <tr ‘anything’>

I’ve done:

op_file = HTML_CODE
if op_file =~ /(<tr(.*?)>)+/

but it catches everything on from the first <tr to the end of the line.
Any ideas?

-Shinkaku

2

Anthony W. wrote:

op_file = HTML_CODE
if op_file =~ /(<tr(.*?)>)+/

You want if op_file =~ /<tr.*?>/

But see below.

but it catches everything on from the first <tr to the end of the line.

Also, try scanning for matches, like this:

#!/usr/bin/ruby -w

path=“path-to-HTML-page”

data = File.read(path)

array = data.scan(%r{<tr.*?>})

puts array

3

Anthony W. wrote:

I’m trying to parse through some html code and count the number of times
a match happens.

If the code is not yet XHTML, use Tidy to upgrade it.

Then parse it with XPath, looking for your match.

(Tip: All HTML that you control should be XHTML, of the highest quality.
Don’t rely on sloppy HTML and “browser forgiveness”!)

4

Hi –

On Wed, 25 Oct 2006, Michael P. wrote:

op_file = HTML_CODE
if op_file =~ /(<tr(.*?)>)+/

You are parsing always one line only.
Perhaps you mean a Regular Expression like

/(<tr([^>]*?>)+/m

The /m doesn’t make any difference there, because you’re not using the
wildcard dot. /m just adds \n to the dot class.

David

5

Also, try scanning for matches, like this:

#!/usr/bin/ruby -w

path=“path-to-HTML-page”

data = File.read(path)

array = data.scan(%r{<tr.*?>})

puts array

Thanks, this worked.

6

Anthony W. wrote:

op_file = HTML_CODE
if op_file =~ /(<tr(.*?)>)+/

You are parsing always one line only.
Perhaps you mean a Regular Expression like

/(<tr([^>]*?>)+/m

Anyway I am not sure if the if… is the right
construct. Don’t you want to get the return value
of the match, which delivers you a MatchData
object from which you can get the results as
an array or so.

MP