http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=537819


in reply to pulling just text from a url

I've had success avoiding script and css data within web pages using HTML::TokeParser as follows:
# this assumes an html file in @ARGV or on STDIN: my $src; { # read the entire HTML input stream as one contiguous string: local $/ = undef; $src = <>; } my $htm = HTML::TokeParser->new( \$src ); my $inscript = 0; my $ignore = join '|', qw/script style cssheader/; while ( my $tkn = $htm->get_token ) { if ( $$tkn[0] eq 'S' and $$tkn[1] =~ /^(?:$ignore)$/ ) { $inscript++; # skip anything having to do with scripts, styl +es or css next; } elsif ( $$tkn[0] eq 'E' and $$tkn[1] =~ /^(?:$ignore)$/ ) { $inscript--; next; } elsif ( $$tkn[0] eq 'T' and ! $inscript ) { # we have text that is not part of scripting or styling, # so do something with this text... } }
This assumes the html input is well formed with respect to script, style and cssheader tags. Note that HTML::TokeParser isn't really any more complicated than HTML::TokeParser::Simple -- you just have to know the structure of the tokens that it returns, so that you can set up handlers for the different types (start tags flagged by  $$tkn[0] eq 'S', end tags by 'E', text data by 'T', etc, with tag name or text content stored in  $$tkn[1]).