phpxmlweb-scrapingxpath

Scrape HTML table data and create XML or JSON doc


I need to scrape some website data from a table on a website and create an XML or JSON document that will be used by an app. and i have some problem getting the below data.

The table looks like this:

<table border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" bgcolor="#DDEEFF" width="100%">
<tr>
<td width="20%" ><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="1">SRC</a></td></font>
    <td width="58%" ><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="1"><a href="http://example.com/this/news?id=1&by=today" onMouseOver="a('Open Bulletin');return true" onMouseOut="b()">Welcome</font></a></td>
<td width="17%" align="center"><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="1">Event</td></font>
    </tr>   

<tr>
<td width="20%" ><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="1">FMD</a></td></font>
    <td width="58%" ><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="1"><a href="http://example.com/this/news?id=2&by=today" onMouseOver="a('Open Bulletin');return true" onMouseOut="b()">Another News</font></a></td>
<td width="17%" align="center"><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="1">Updates</td></font>
    </tr>   
</td>

And I would like to create an XML feed or JSON that looks like this:

<bulletins>
    <title>Welcome</title>
    <id>1</id>
    <type>News</type>
</bulletins>

<bulletins>
    <title>Another News</title>
    <id>2</id>
    <type>Updates</type>
</bulletins>

Here is my current code :

<?php
$body = explode('<table border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" bgcolor="#DDEEFF" width="100%">', $html);

$xml = simplexml_load_string("<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?><xml />");

$rows = array();
foreach (array_slice(explode('<tr>', end($body)), 1) as $row)
{   
    preg_match('#<a.*?href="(.*?)".*?>(.*?)</a>#i', $row, $title);
    preg_match('/<a.*href="(.*)".*>(.*)<\/a>/iU', $row, $id);
   // preg_match('/type">([^<]+)<\/td>/', $row, $type); 

    $node = $xml->addChild('bulletins');

    $node->addChild('title', $title[1]);
    $node->addChild('id', $id[1]);
   // $node->addChild('type', $due[1]);
}

header('Content-Type: text/xml');
echo $xml->asXML();
?>

But the problem i got this

<xml>
    <bulletins>
        <title>http://example.com/this/news?id=1</title>
        <id>http://example.com/this/news?id=1</id>
    </bulletins>
    <bulletins>
        <title>http://example.com/this/news?id=2</title>
        <id>http://example.com/this/news?id=2</id>
    </bulletins>
</xml>

Solution

  • Here's a quick example to get you started using only dom functions:

    $dom = new DOMDocument();
    @$dom->loadHTMLFile(url);
    $xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);
    
    $xml = new DOMDocument();
    foreach($xpath->query('//table/tr') as $tr) {
      $bulletin = $xml->appendChild($xml->createElement("bulletin"));
      $title = $xpath->query('.//td[2]//a', $tr)->item(0)->nodeValue;
      $bulletin->appendChild($xml->createElement("title",$title));
      $type = $xpath->query('.//td[3]/font', $tr)->item(0)->nodeValue;
      $bulletin->appendChild($xml->createElement("type",$type));
    }
    echo $xml->saveXML();