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up vote 6 down vote favorite
2

--------------EDIT------------------------

So i am going with the DOM approach. Here is what I have so far:

  <?php function getdata(){
    $contents = file_get_contents('internatdata.htm');
    //create a DOM based off of the string from the html table
     $DOM = new DOMDocument;
   $DOM->loadHTML($contents);

   //get all tr and td
   $items = $DOM->getElementsByTagName('tr');
   $tds = $DOM->getElementsByTagName('td');

   function tdrows($elements){
       $str = "";
       for ($ii =0; $ii < $elements->length; $ii++){
            $str .= $elements->item($ii)->nodeValue . ",";


           }
          return $str;
       }

   for ($i = 0; $i < $items->length; $i++){


       echo tdrows($tds) . "; <br />";

       }

    } 
?>

The issue I am having is that I only want to select the td's from each table row. I am trying to achieve this with a nested loop. unfortunately It is printing the text of every tag on the page how ever many times as there are tags. how can i get it so its only printing the td of each tr and not every td on the dom?

I need to use an html table as the source of my data because I don't have access to the database. I figure to be able to query data from the html table I need create a function to convert the table into an array, or a multidimensional array.

I have the basic Idea I think but I need some help finishing the code to return an array based off the html table.

Also If you have a better way of doing this other than converting the table to an array then please let me know

Here is the idea I had so far:

 <?php
 function getdata(){

    $contents = file_get_contents('data.htm');
    //add delimiters (semicolon for a row and comma for a cell) ???

    $stripped = strip_tags($contents);

    //explode into an array based off the delimiters above ???


    } 
    ?>
share|improve this question
4  
The best way would be to use a DOM parser, for example php.net/manual/en/book.dom.php –  jli Dec 9 '11 at 17:13
1  
stackoverflow.com/questions/3627489/php-parse-html-code –  Rodin Dec 9 '11 at 17:14
    
Do 'data.htm' only contains a table and its contents, or it is a full html page with many more elements? Anyway, your code is still lacking all the part related to the parsing of the table elements. IMO, I would look for an alternative way: I do not like the idea of reading an html table. –  jap1968 Dec 9 '11 at 17:15
    
@jap1968 the data.htm file contains only the html table I need to use –  JDV590 Dec 9 '11 at 17:17
    
@jli can you see my edits above and offer any advice...thanks –  JDV590 Dec 9 '11 at 18:14

3 Answers 3

up vote 12 down vote accepted

I've updated your edit to fix it.

For a live demo, see http://codepad.viper-7.com/Vu5WdK

<?php
function getdata()
{
    $contents = "<table><tr><td>Row 1 Column 1</td><td>Row 1 Column 2</td></tr><tr><td>Row 2 Column 1</td><td>Row 2 Column 2</td></tr></table>";
    $DOM = new DOMDocument;
    $DOM->loadHTML($contents);

    $items = $DOM->getElementsByTagName('tr');

    function tdrows($elements)
    {
        $str = "";
        foreach ($elements as $element)
        {
            $str .= $element->nodeValue . ", ";
        }
        return $str;
    }
    foreach ($items as $node)
    {
        echo tdrows($node->childNodes) . "<br />";
    }
}
getdata();
?>
share|improve this answer
    
perfect..thank you –  JDV590 Dec 12 '11 at 16:28
up vote 1 down vote

One way to make this easier is to use a dom parser http://simplehtmldom.sourceforge.net/ .

You are still going to have to extract the information into an array but this will make it easier to iterate through the elements one by one.

share|improve this answer
up vote 0 down vote

You should consider using XML.

It is much easier than HTML table and much more sufficient.

Example: http://www.php.net/manual/en/simplexml.examples-basic.php

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