need to parse a HTML file and add content to it

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

Hi Monks, I need to parse a HTML file in my disk and add content to it in between UL tags and create another file and write out the output into it. But the thing is, I need to insert content in all UL tags except the first and last UL tag. I tried html::Parser and HTML::TokeParser, but some error in reading file occurs. Here is the file and code I used. Kindly help..

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http:/
+/www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta name="keywords" content="" />
<title>My Page</title>
</head>
<body>
<div class="faq">
          <ul id="faq">
            <li> <a href="#quickglance" >At a quick glance </a></li>
            <li><a href="#page1">intro </a></li>
            </ul>
          <p class="border">&nbsp;</p>
          <h2><a name="quickglance">At a glance</a><br />
            <br />
          </h2>
          <ul>
            <li class="orangeTxt1"><a name="a1" id="a"><strong>How doe
+s it work?</strong></a></li>
            <li><strong>Step 1:</strong> Commitment.</li>
          </ul>
          </p>
          <div class="border"> </div>
          <ul>
            <li class="orangeTxt1"><a name="a2" id="a2"><strong>Who ma
+nages it?</strong></a></li>
            <li> owner actively commits  by  publicizing it to his/her
+ friends. </li>
          </ul>
 <p><strong>If  you have other questions, please email us at:</strong>
+</p>
        </div>
<div class="footer">
      <div class="footerLinks">
        <ul>
          <li><a href="aboutus.html"> About us</a></li>
           <li> <a href="contact.html">Contact Us</a></li>
        </ul>
      </div>
    </div>
</body>
</html>
[download]

The Code I used for this is,

use strict;
use warnings;
our $content='';
our $val='';
our $count = 1;
open (MYFILE, 'C:\Program Files\Perl Express\Scripts\faq.html');
print "The HTML File Contents are,\n";
my $mycount = 1;
while ($content = <MYFILE>) {
chop $content;
$val = $content;

my $ins = qq{
<span class="backTotop"> <a href="#a$count">Back to top</a></span>
<div class="borderGoal"> </div>
  };

if ($val =~ m/<\/ul>/)
{
$count = $count + 1;
}
$val =~ s{(</ul>)}{$ins$1}gsi;
if (-e "../faq1.html") {
unlink ("../faq1.html");
open (DA, ">>faq1.html") or die "$! error trying to overwrite";
print DA "$val\n";
close (DA);
}
else {
open (DA, ">>faq1.html") or die "$! error trying to overwrite";
print DA "$val\n";
close (DA);
}
}
[download]

Comment on need to parse a HTML file and add content to it Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: need to parse a HTML file and add content to it by moritz (Cardinal) on Jul 20, 2011 at 12:05 UTC
I tried html::Parser and HTML::TokeParser, but some error in reading file occurs. So, what's the error? Where is the code that uses HTML::Parser/HTML::TokeParser? It's hard to tell you what's wrong with code that we can't see. Have you tried to customize the code I gave you here? If yes, what problems did you face? If not, why not? Perl 6 - second systems done right	[reply]
Re: need to parse a HTML file and add content to it by metaperl (Curate) on Jul 20, 2011 at 18:41 UTC
I suggest HTML::Element or maybe even HTML::Seamstress, or perhaps just HTML::Element::Library. `;)` The mantra of every experienced web application developer is the same: thou shalt separate business logic from display. Ironically, almost all template engines allow violation of this separation principle, which is the very impetus for HTML template engine development. -- Terence Parr, "Enforcing Strict Model View Separation in Template Engines"	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: need to parse a HTML file and add content to it by pemungkah (Priest) on Jul 21, 2011 at 01:58 UTC
Agreed. You probably want a DOM-ish approach rather than a streamish approach.	[reply]