HTML::TableExtract: how to run the right argument [see live example]

Question

A question regarding a parser. Is there any chance to catch some separators within the that separate the table... The paser script runs allready nicely. Note - i want to store the data into a MySQL database. So it would be great to have some seperators - (commas, tabs or somewhat else - a tab seperated values or comma seperated values are handy formats to work with...

( here the data out of the following site: http://192.68.214.70/km/asps/schulsuche.asp?q=a&a=20 )

lfd. Nr. Schul- nummer Schulname Straße PLZ Ort Telefon Fax Schulart Webseite 1 0401 Mädchenrealschule Marienburg, Abenberg, der Diözese Eichstätt Marienburg 1 91183  Abenberg  09178/509210 Realschulen mrs-marienburg.homepage.t-online.de 2 6581 Volksschule Abenberg (Grundschule) Güssübelstr. 2 91183  Abenberg  09178/215 09178/905060 Volksschulen home.t-online.de/home/vs-abenberg 6 3074 Private Berufsschule zur sonderpäd. Förderung, Förderschwerpunkt Lernen, Abensberg Regensburger Straße 60 93326 Abensberg 09443/709191 09443/709193 Berufsschulen zur sonderpädog. Förderung www.berufsschule-abensberg.de

Well i need to have those lines divided into at least three columns - take the first record.

name: Volksschule Abenberg (Grundschule) street: Güssübelstr. 2 postal-code and town: 91183  Abenberg fax and telephone: 09178/215 09178/905060 type of school: Volksschulen website: home.t-online.de/home/vs-abenberg

Or even better - i have divided the postal-code and town into two seperate columns!? Question: is this possible?

By the way: see the first record: (here i only show the names of the school)

1 0401 Mädchenrealschule Marienburg, Abenberg, 6 3074 Private Berufsschule zur sonderpäd. Förderung, Förderschwerpunkt Lernen, Abensberg

Those have some commas inside the name; does this make it difficult to create a parser that creates csv-fomate?

any idea how to do this in Perl... If possible it would be just great!! many many thx for a hint regarding this little issue - besides this all is great and fascinating!

zero

BTW - if you want - i can add the code. No problem here.

  #!/usr/bin/perl
    use strict;
    use warnings;
    use HTML::TableExtract;
    use LWP::Simple;
    use Cwd;
    use POSIX qw(strftime);
    my $te = HTML::TableExtract->new;
    my $total_records = 0;
    my $suchbegriffe = "e";
    my $treffer = 50;
    my $range = 0;
    my $url_to_process = "http://192.68.214.70/km/asps/schulsuche.asp?q=";
    my $processdir = "processing";
    my $counter = 50;
    my $displaydate = "";
    my $percent = 0;

    &workDir();
    chdir $processdir;
    &processURL();
    print "\nPress <enter> to continue\n";
    <>;
    $displaydate = strftime('%Y%m%d%H%M%S', localtime);
    open OUTFILE, ">webdata_for_$suchbegriffe\_$displaydate.txt";
    &processData();
    close OUTFILE;
    print "Finished processing $total_records records...\n";
    print "Processed data saved to $ENV{HOME}/$processdir/webdata_for_$suchbegriffe\_$displaydate.txt\n";
    unlink 'processing.html';
    die "\n";

    sub processURL() {
    print "\nProcessing $url_to_process$suchbegriffe&a=$treffer&s=$range\n";
    getstore("$url_to_process$suchbegriffe&a=$treffer&s=$range", 'tempfile.html') or die 'Unable to get page';

       while( <tempfile.html> ) {
          open( FH, "$_" ) or die;
          while( <FH> ) {
             if( $_ =~ /^.*?(Treffer <b>)(d+)( - )(d+)(</b> w+ w+ <b>)(d+).*/ ) {
                $total_records = $6;
                print "Total records to process is $total_records\n";
                }
             }
             close FH;
       }
       unlink 'tempfile.html';
    }

    sub processData() {
       while ( $range <= $total_records) {
          getstore("$url_to_process$suchbegriffe&a=$treffer&s=$range", 'processing.html') or die 'Unable to get page';
          $te->parse_file('processing.html');
          my ($table) = $te->tables;
          for my $row ( $table->rows ) {
             cleanup(@$row);
             print OUTFILE "@$row\n";
          }
          $| = 1; 
          print "Processed records $range to $counter";
          print "\r";
          $counter = $counter + 50;
          $range = $range + 50;
          $te = HTML::TableExtract->new;
       }
    }

    sub cleanup() {
       for ( @_ ) {
          s/s+/ /g;
       }
    }

    sub workDir() {
    # Use home directory to process data
    chdir or die "$!";
    if ( ! -d $processdir ) {
       mkdir ("$ENV{HOME}/$processdir", 0755) or die "Cannot make directory $processdir: $!";
       }
    }  

Answer 1

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use LWP::Simple;
use HTML::TableExtract;
use Text::CSV;

my $html= get 'http://192.68.214.70/km/asps/schulsuche.asp?q=a&a=20';
$html =~ tr/\r//d;     # strip carriage returns
$html =~ s/ / /g; # expand spaces

my $te = new HTML::TableExtract();
$te->parse($html);

my @cols = qw(
    rownum
    number
    name
    phone
    type
    website
);

my @fields = qw(
    rownum
    number
    name
    street
    postal
    town
    phone
    fax
    type
    website
);

my $csv = Text::CSV->new({ binary => 1 });

foreach my $ts ($te->table_states) {
    foreach my $row ($ts->rows) {

        #  trim leading/trailing whitespace from base fields
        s/^\s+//, s/\s+$// for @$row;

        # load the fields into the hash using a "hash slice"
        my %h;
        @h{@cols} = @$row;

        # derive some fields from base fields, again using a hash slice
        @h{qw/name street postal town/} = split /\n+/, $h{name};
        @h{qw/phone fax/} = split /\n+/, $h{phone};

        #  trim leading/trailing whitespace from derived fields
        s/^\s+//, s/\s+$// for @h{qw/name street postal town/};

        $csv->combine(@h{@fields});
        print $csv->string, "\n";
    }
}

Answer 2

I recommend the use of HTML::Parser module, which you can adjust in order to extract the values of the table cells. See documentation: http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?HTML::Parser