HTML::TreeBuilder builds trees of HTML::Elements. The methods we'll be looking at come from there. Keep the docs handy. :-)

The table cells we are interested in look like the following (tidied up): 

<td width="48%" valign="top">
  <b>SERVPRO<sup><small>&#174;</small></sup>of Northern Alabama</b>
  <br>
  Wilson, David & Christie
  <br>
  Phone: (205)678-2224
  <br>
  Fax: (205)678-2226
  <br>
  <a href='http://www.servpro.com/'>Visit their web site</a>
</td>

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First we get an array of all those cells (an array of H::E objects) 
my @cells = $r->look_down(
  _tag => q{td},
  width => q{48%},
  valign => q{top},
);

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In scalar context $obj->look_down returns the first found, in list context it returns all of them.

For each cell 

for my $cell (@cells){

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we first look down for the the bold tag element and print out the text within it 
my $bold = $cell->look_down(_tag => q{b});
print $bold->as_text, qq{\n};

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we then iterate over a list of the elements 
  
for my $item ($cell->content_refs_list) {
  next if ref $$item;
  print $$item, qq{\n};
}

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$obj->content_refs_list is another H::E method which, as you might guess, returns a list of references. Each reference is either a reference to an H::E object (i.e. another ref) or a reference to text. next if ref $$item; skips over other H::E objects (in this case the <b>, <br> and <a> tags) so what is left is a reference to text. $$item dereferences the reference.

In fact this looks very similar to the example in the H::E docs. So go see. :-)

Finaly we want to look down for the anchor tag 

 my $link = $cell->look_down(
   _tag => q{a},
 );

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and print out the href attribute 
print $link->attr(q{href}), qq{\n\n};

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Rather than print out the results you could push them onto an array (say, @record) so that $record[0] would be the location, $record[1] the phone number etc..

You can get the low down on the arrow -> in perlreftut and perlref. We use it here to call an objects method.

Good luck!

In reply to Re^3: PERL HTML::TableExtractor by wfsp
in thread PERL HTML::TableExtractor by jdlev

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