RE: [PHP-WIN] DOM

Thanks Tom. Yes you have it exactly right. That is the approach I'm currently aiming for! However, as you say this approach is hard-coded to each source website. These websites have a nasty habit of changing their format slightly on a fairly regular basis. I'm also attempting to pull share price information from many different websites at the same time because none provide the full set of data I require plus some shares (off market particularly) are only provided on dedicated web sites. The reason I'm attempting to access the HTML textual data via the DOM is because I can run a looped search on all the #text fields until I find a match on a company name or EPIC code and then all data on the nested #text elements will be referring to that company. This allows easy data capture and transfer to my database. Another major benefit of this approach is that the same PHP code can be used to search ANY HTML file and recover the required data without source code changes. That's the idea but whether it's actually possible in reality is another matter ;) Thanks James -----Original Message----- From: Tom [mailto:tom.mathews@st.com] Sent: 15 January 2001 10:31 Cc: php-windows@lists.php.net Subject: Re: [PHP-WIN] DOM James If I'm reading your many posts right, then what you are trying to do is pull the share prices from the same site at (say) half hourly intervals, so that you can use them yourself / analyse them or whatever. In this case, I suspect that the format of the page you pull down will ALWAYS BE IDENTICAL, so you actually only have to work out a suitable parser to extract the data once. If I remember rightly from a couple of weeks back, you are using MySQL as the database? In this case, pull the html file down, save it on your server and examine how the html is constructed (it will almost certainly be an ASP / PHP while construct to build a table, all of whose rows will thus be identical apart from the data). Then you can use a command line (run from a PHP script if you like) MySQL LOAD DATA INFILE 'blah.html' INTO TABLE Share_Prices FIELDS TERMINATED BY '</td><td>'; type of construct. Note that you will want to strip out the beginning and end of the file first as well. This may sound like a bit of work, but you only have to do it once, as the file format will always be the same (barring the addition of new stocks). Tom James Duncan wrote: > I don't think this will work in my case because I don't control the layout > of the HTML page and hence can't add the hidden fields. I'm downloading the > HTML pages from a website. It would require as much work to insert the > hidden fields as trying to strip the HTML tags in an attempt to read the > data directly from the HTML page itself. There must be a way to access the > DOM directly from PHP? I notice in the manual there is a section regarding > XML DOM but not the DOM itself. > > Are the DOM values only available on the client? If that's the case then PHP > can't be used to read them because it's limited to the server side? > > Thanks > > James > > -----Original Message----- > From: Michael Stearne [mailto:mstearne@entermix.com] > Sent: 13 January 2001 17:06 > To: James Duncan > Cc: php-windows@lists.php.net > Subject: Re: [PHP-WIN] DOM > > Could you do something like: > > myForm.myField.value=tablejames.firstChild.childNodes[1].childNodes[4].first > Child.firstChild.node Value; > > Set up a form of hidden fields. Extract the values from the DOM and then > have the user hit a Submit button to get to the next page. At that point > the values that were collected and put into the hidden form fields will be > submitted and you next page (the PHP page) could INSERT the values into the > database, > > Michael > > On Friday, January 12, 2001, at 07:30 PM, James Duncan wrote: > > > Hi folks, > > > > I'm still new to HTML, Javascript and PHP but learning (fast hopefully). > > I've just started accessing DOM elements. I have worked out how to update > > the contents of table cells directly using this method, etc. In Javascript > I > > would use code like: > > > > alert("Value is: " + > > > tablejames.firstChild.childNodes[1].childNodes[4].firstChild.firstChild.node > > Name); > > alert("Value is: " + > > > tablejames.firstChild.childNodes[1].childNodes[5].firstChild.firstChild.node > > Value); > > > > This Javascript shows the name and value of the child element. > > > > Now I want to use PHP to extract data (values) from HTML pages like I do > > with the above Javascript. Is this possible? Obviously with the Javascript > > the HTML page has already been rendered in the browser (i.e. all tree > > elements have been created). This makes extracting data a simple case of > > finding the "#text" elements and reading in the values. Can I do the same > > thing with PHP and an HTML file I've downloaded from the Internet? > Obviously > > this file is sitting on my server and hasn't been rendered in a browser... > > > > The whole point of this exercise is so that I can extract values from an > > HTML table and populate them into a database. Maybe it's easier to process > > the HTML file line by line and strip the unwanted HTML tags? However, with > > this approach I've got to hardcode each webpage... > > > > If this is a silly question then sorry but you only learn if you ask ;) > > > > Thanks > > > > James > > > > > > > > -- > > PHP Windows Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: php-windows-unsubscribe@lists.php.net > > For additional commands, e-mail: php-windows-help@lists.php.net > > To contact the list administrators, e-mail: php-list-admin@lists.php.net > > > > > > > > -- > PHP Windows Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > To unsubscribe, e-mail: php-windows-unsubscribe@lists.php.net > For additional commands, e-mail: php-windows-help@lists.php.net > To contact the list administrators, e-mail: php-list-admin@lists.php.net