How to extract hyperlink using php

Question

I have searched online and thought this would work but it doesn't for some reason. I'm trying to extract a hyperlink that only displays it's URL from a HTML. I'm only trying to extract the URL within the td align="center". Here is a sample of the HTML doc I'm trying to extract:

<td>
    Aug 17
</td>

<td>
    FT
</td>

<td align="right">
    <a href="site1">Arsenal ruby</a>
</td>

**<td align="center">**
    <a href="site2">1-3</a>
</td>

<td><a href="site3">Aston Villa</a></td>


<td style="text-align:right;">60,003</td>

And here is my PHP code to extract it from the td align="center":

<?php

//$searchURL = "site";
include 'simple_html_dom.php';

$site = 'website';
$html = file_get_html($site);

$tabledata = array();

// Find all TD tags with "align=center"
foreach($html->find('td[align=center]') as $e)
echo $e->href . '<br>';

?>

I know the code works because the code can extract everything if it is just the td within the barracks.

Have you tried regular expressions? See preg_match

randak
– randak

2013-12-13 23:01:58 +00:00
Commented Dec 13, 2013 at 23:01 — randak
– randak, Commented Dec 13, 2013 at 23:01
You want td[align=center] a

pguardiario
– pguardiario

2013-12-14 01:47:57 +00:00
Commented Dec 14, 2013 at 1:47 — pguardiario
– pguardiario, Commented Dec 14, 2013 at 1:47

Mike Brant · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-13 23:03:57Z

2

So you have identified the <td> elements themselves, but you did not go down to the next nesting level to grab the href from the <a> elements. You might do that like this:

foreach($html->find('td[align=center]') as $e)
echo $e->children(0)->href . '<br>';

answered Dec 13, 2013 at 23:03

Mike Brant

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4 Comments

Nic Over a year ago

This help a lot. Where can I find a good documentation that explains this?

Andrew Briggs Over a year ago

@Nic - Here, simplehtmldom.sourceforge.net/manual.htm and here, simplehtmldom.sourceforge.net/manual_api.htm

Nic Over a year ago

Thanks. one more thing It works great but receiving an error message "Trying to get property of non-object in C:\wamp\www\tutorials\table_new.php on line 20". This is on the echo $e->children(0)->href . '<br>'; that you added, do you know why?

ThW Over a year ago

That's because it just reads the href of the first child node in the td, here is no validation that the td has a node or that this node has a href attribute.

ThW · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-13 23:12:21Z

Use the DOM and Xpath:

Select all td elements in the document

//td

Only if the align attribute equals "center"

//td[@align="center"]

Get the a sub elements

//td[@align="center"]//a

Get the href attribute nodes of that a elements

//td[@align="center"]//a/@href

Source example:

$html = <<<'HTML'
<td>
    FT
</td>
<td align="right">
    <a href="site1">Arsenal ruby</a>
</td>
**<td align="center">**
    <a href="site2">1-3</a>
</td>
<td><a href="site3">Aston Villa</a></td>
<td style="text-align:right;">60,003</td>
HTML;

$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadHTML($html);
$xpath = new DOMXpath($dom);

$nodes = $xpath->evaluate('//td[@align="center"]//a/@href');
foreach ($nodes as $node) {
  var_dump($node->value);
}

Andrew Briggs · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-13 23:13:16Z

0

You selected the td element. The anchor element is the child of the td element.

// Find all TD tags with "align=center"
foreach($html->find('td[align=center]') as $e)
echo $e->firstChild()->getAttribute('href') . '<br>';

answered Dec 13, 2013 at 23:13

Andrew Briggs

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