Simple HTML DOM Parser - Skip certain element

Question

I am using the Simple HTML DOM Parser and I want to completely ignore the contents of the "nested" element and get the contents of the proceeding "pre" element.

<div id=parent>

<div class="nested">
<pre>Text that I want ignored</pre>
</div>

<pre>
This is the text I want to access
</pre>
</div>

I don't have control of the HTML source, and the owner has recently added the "nested" element. Before I accessed the content I needed by doing so:

$page_contents = file_get_html($url);    
$div_content = $page_contents->find('div[id=parent]pre', 0)->innertext;

But obviously the new nested element has broken my method.

I can't seem to find any official documentation regarding this kind of scenario.

Why don't you code a function that iterates among the children of the div with id "parent" and ignore the children that aren't pre? Iterating though these children will bypass "Text that I want to ignore" cause it isn't a child of the div id parent, although their are indirectly related. — PEdroArthur
– PEdroArthur, Commented Apr 8, 2011 at 13:48

mcgrailm · Accepted Answer · 2011-04-08 14:13:45Z

3

not tested but try this

$div_content = $page_contents->find('div[id=parent][class!=nested]pre', 0)->innertext;

or

$div_content = $page_contents->find('div[id=parent class!=nested]pre', 0)->innertext;

or maybe even just this I think this is really the one but again I have not tested

$div_content = $page_contents->find('div[class!=nested]pre', 1)->innertext;

still don't know if this will work but try this

$div_content = $page_contents->find('div[class!=nested pre]', 0)->innertext;

or

$div_content = $page_contents->find('div[class!=nested pre]', 0)->plaintext;

edited Apr 8, 2011 at 14:13

answered Apr 8, 2011 at 13:50

mcgrailm

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5 Comments

NateShoffner Over a year ago

Hmm, both the first and third return "Text that I want ignored", meanwhile the 2nd one returns an error.

mcgrailm Over a year ago

@Nate Shoffner if you change the 0 to 1 do you get the right thing ?

NateShoffner Over a year ago

I was just looking in the documentation to see what that parameter was for. And yes it works. This is what the documentation says: "Find (N)th anchor, returns element object or null if not found (zero based)"

NateShoffner Over a year ago

The 3rd snippet is the one that worked when changing the 2nd parameter to 1. If you update the snippet, I'll accept your answer. :)

mcgrailm Over a year ago

@nate-shoffner edited answer add some other things to try too

dimention · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-16 19:55:11Z

find('div[id=parent] pre') finds all pre tags in specified div and doesnt care if one of them is enclosed in another div, so heres a few suggestions:

if you know exactly which pre you want to get, just specify the number counting from zero, in your case:

$div_content = $page_contents->find('div[id=parent] pre', 1)->innertext;

in case you dont know how many pre are there, or dont know the order, you could just remove the one you dont want and then do the previous line, but this time specifying number 0:

$page_contents->find('div[id=parent] div[id=nested] pre', 0)->outertext = '';
$div_content = $page_contents->find('div[id=parent] pre', 0)->innertext;

and in case you dont want to change $page_contents, just assign your parent div to a temporary variable, and do like above:

$temp = $page_contents->find('div[id=parent]', 0);
$temp->find('div[id=nested] pre', 0)->outertext='';
$div_content = $temp->find('pre', 0)->innertext;

ofcourse there are a lot of other ways to do this, should read the manual http://simplehtmldom.sourceforge.net/manual.htm though it mentions just the main features, a lot more is under the hood

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