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

Hi guys! I am trying to extract some information from a table in an HTML page. Namely, the small chunk of info that you see under "Representative" in the original website. But, although I *think* I am searching for the correct tag, I think I'm getting the whole file instead? Could you please help me find what I am doing wrong?

Here is the code I have so far. I am sorry if this is such a simple question

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use autodie;
use Data::Dump;
use HTML::Tree;
use LWP::Simple qw(get);

my $content=get('http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/?term=Xylella_fast
+idiosa');

my $tree = HTML::Tree->new();

$tree->parse($content);

my $data =$tree->look_down(
    '_tag' =>'div',
    class => 'genome_descr'
    );

dd $data;

[download]

How would you extract those lines (not the table) into an array? What am I doing wrong in the search?

Thanks in advance! You guys rock!

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Problem extracting an HTML table with Perl
by kennethk (Abbot) on Aug 11, 2014 at 16:47 UTC
    The problem is your visualiztion method (I think). Data::Dump outputs all entries in the object, and HTML::Elements are built with _parent keys so you can navigate bidirectionally. If you output with 
    print $data->as_HTML;

    [download]
    instead, I think you'll get what you expect.

    #11929 First ask yourself `How would I do this without a computer?' Then have the computer do it the same way.

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

      Indeed, it got a bit better, but I am still getting a lot of information. I now found that my search is completely independent of that "class" in my $tree->find. So any of the following alternatives gives the same result, and shows that the search is only done on the tag:

      my $data =$tree->find(
    '_tag' =>'div'
    );

      [download]

      or even

      my $data =$tree->find(
    '_tag' =>'div',
    class => 'somethingthatdoesnotexists1209841290r'
    );

      [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
        That is not what I see, and I note the OP used the look down method instead of the find method as you have in this post.

        If I run 

        #!/usr/local/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use autodie;
use Data::Dump;
use HTML::Tree;
use LWP::Simple qw(get);

my $content=get('http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/?term=Xylella_fast
+idiosa');

my $tree = HTML::Tree->new();

$tree->parse($content);

my $data =$tree->look_down(
    '_tag' =>'div',
    class => 'genome_descr'
    );

print $data->as_HTML;

        [download]
        I get the output 
        <div class="genome_descr"><p><b>Submitter: </b><a href="http://aeg.lbi
+.ic.unicamp.br/xf/" target="_blank">Sao Paulo state (Brazil) Consorti
+um</a></div>

        [download]
        If I run with 
        my @data =$tree->look_down(
    '_tag' =>'div',
    class => 'genome_descr'
    );

        [download]
        instead, I get 2 results. How does this compare for you?

        #11929 First ask yourself `How would I do this without a computer?' Then have the computer do it the same way.

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
Re: Problem extracting an HTML table with Perl
by runrig (Abbot) on Aug 11, 2014 at 16:42 UTC
[reply]

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