http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=222730

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Perl Gods, I need some help -- suppose I want to search a variable containing the contents of a HTML page, what would be the best way? For example, the HTML page has "NOTE: Something somethinng", but NOTE: is surrounded by a bunch of HTML gook. All I want is the stuff after "NOTE:" .. how would I do that? 
<font face='Arial,Helvetica,Sans Serif' color='#000055' size='2'/><B>N
+ote:</B>  &nbsp;</font><font face='Arial,Helvetica,Sans Serif' color=
+'#000055' size='2'/>By arrangement.</font>

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And I want to extract "By arrangement." from the above .... how would I do that? Thanks, Helpless (and Stupid)

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Extract text from HTML
by jdporter (Paladin) on Dec 28, 2002 at 15:29 UTC
    Here's a nice little function that does it.

    (FYI - the faq noted by Juerd is obsolete. Not only does it not give an actual solution, but it recommends HTML::Parse, which is now deprecated.) 
      use HTML::Parser;

  sub extract_html_text
  {
    my $html = shift;
    my $text = '';
    HTML::Parser->new( api_version => 3, text_h => [ sub { $text .= "@
+_"; }, "dtext" ] )->parse( $html )->eof;
    $text
  }

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    UPDATE: Here's another (imho, nicer) little function that does it: 
      use HTML::TreeBuilder;

  sub extract_html_text
  {
    HTML::TreeBuilder->new_from_content($_[0])->as_text
  }

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    jdporter
    ...porque es dificil estar guapo y blanco.

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      jdporter, Thanks a ton for your help ..... that did it. I had a question though ..... with regards to my question and your answer, I am using - 
      my $we = extract_html_text($browser->{res}->content);
my @note   = $we =~ m/Note:\s*([^<]+)/gi;

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      to first strip the HTML gook and then search the remainder for "Note". The thing is that "@note" prints out everything after Note: i.e. all the other coding in the remainder of the (formerly) HTML file, etc. Is there any way I can get it to search for Note:, collect all the information after it and stop when it reaches "Pre" or "Attrib" or "Link"? Would greatly appreciate your feedback. Thanks.
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        How about: 
        my ($note) = $we =~ m/Note:\s*(.+?)(?:Pre|Attrib|Link)/sgi

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Re: Extract text from HTML
by Juerd (Abbot) on Dec 28, 2002 at 14:47 UTC
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Re: Extract text from HTML
by vek (Prior) on Dec 29, 2002 at 14:09 UTC
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Re: Extract text from HTML
by osama (Scribe) on Dec 29, 2002 at 20:56 UTC
    I used to like reinventing the wheel every time... I used to do something like this: 
    # THIS IS BAD
s/(\s|\&nbsp;)+/ /g;
s/<(BR|P)>/\n/ig;
s/<.+?>//g;

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    Now I just : 
    use HTML::TokeParser;

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