Converting HTML to usable data

**Keristero** · 22nd July 2015, 02:19 AM

Hello!

I would really like to use the GET object to download the source HTML from a website and then parse that information somehow to split everything into easily usable values, for instance
If I had this HTML

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>

<h1>My First Heading</h1>
<a href=http://www.w3schools.com>This is a link</a>
<a href=http://www.w3schools.com>This is also a link</a>
<p>My first paragraph.</p>

</body>
</html>

I would like to be able to loop through it all to convert it into some values like

H10text="My First Heading"
Link0URL="http://www.w3schools.com"
Link0Description="This is a link"
Link1URL="http://www.w3schools.com"
Link1Description="This is also a link"
P0text="My first paragraph"

I've tried using the string parser using '<' and '>' as delimiters, but then I end up with something like this (example of first few lines)

!DOCTYPE html
html
body
h1
My First Heading
/h1
a href=http://www.w3schools.com
This is a link
/a

This is okay, because I can use the string parser to get specific elements by looping through them something like

On loop "elements" +
If element ="h1" -> set Link0Description to (getElementById(Loopindex"loop"+2)),

But that only works when there are not additional things like this

<P><FONT SIZE="4" FACE="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Some example text</FONT></P>

Which has me a bit stumped right now.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, any advice?

**Keristero** · 23rd July 2015, 01:25 AM

After some investigating I think I might be able to do this with the Web View object using

GetInnerTextbyId$( "GET", >id_name<, >Tag_name<, >Index< )

with datatypes

GetInnerTextbyId$( "GET", "string", "string", "value" )

However I don't know how I'm going to loop through all the tags on the page...
Any Ideas?

**DavidN** · 23rd July 2015, 02:44 AM

HTML parsing is generally very difficult, especially as there's no guarantee that it'll be perfectly formed... are you connecting to sites where you have control over the content, or are you aiming to connect to arbitrary sites? It might help to know the wider context of what you're doing.

**Keristero** · 26th July 2015, 04:14 AM

Oh, thanks for replying.
I'm connecting to arbitrary sites, The idea generate random dungeons based off various HTML elements such as using <a href=URL> as a door to another floor, or in this case; website.

What I really want to be able to do is this.
1. Create an object for each HTML element I want to use, for example <a href>, <p>, <title>
2. Store any attributes for that object as strings/varibles (im not sure if attributes is the right word here, but I mean like the text in a paragraph <p>text</p>)

I've actually already got it working to some extent, but its not pretty.

At the top of the picture you can see the objects that have been created for 'title' and 'a' tags, then on the right I have it displaying all of the strings saved to each object that I click...

My method kindof sucks, if you know of and any better methods than using '<' and '>' as delimiters and looping through elements till you find a match I'd love to hear them.

**DavidN** · 26th July 2015, 05:07 PM

That's amazing

I think a method like that might honestly be the best you'll get - you could put the HTML through a parser to identify all the elements first (maybe by calling the web address of a script you control to then contact the site, get the content and return the elements), but if you're connecting to a site you don't know the content of, there's no guarantee that it'll be able to be parsed.

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