CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpmysqlstringurl
Monica
Monica

Reputation: 1599

extract URLs from href inside unordered lists and insert into mysql with PHP

I have several unordered lists. The list items are URLs. How can I extract the URL and link text from each list item to insert into a database? 

<ul id="1">
    <li><a href="someplace.com">Text</a></li>
    <li><a href="someplace.com">Text</a></li>
    <li><a href="someplace.com">Text</a></li>
</ul>

<ul id="2">
    <li><a href="someplace.com">Text</a></li>
    <li><a href="someplace.com">Text</a></li>
    <li><a href="someplace.com">Text</a></li>
</ul>

<ul id="3">
    <li><a href="someplace.com">Text</a></li>
    <li><a href="someplace.com">Text</a></li>
    <li><a href="someplace.com">Text</a></li>
</ul>

I know RegEx should be avoided. I already have the PDO set up. The ul id number goes into the categoryID on the mysql table.

The only thing that seems to make sense would be something like a while-loop with another loop inside to get the URLs and text, and then after increment the id. I just don't know how to start it. Should the URL and text go into an array?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 959

Answers (4)

M Khalid Junaid
M Khalid Junaid

Reputation: 64476

here is the jQuery version to extract your desired values if you are trying to get them after they have been sent to the browser

var data=$("ul");
var values=new Array();
$.each(data,function(i){
values[i]=$(this).attr("id");
$.each($(this).find("li"),function(j){
values[i+"-"+j+"link"]=$(this).find("a").attr("href")
values[i+"-"+j+"text"]=$(this).find("a").text();
});
});
console.log(values)

Now send this array to your php file via ajax call

Hope it makes sense

Upvotes: 0

Emmanuel Okeke
Emmanuel Okeke

Reputation: 1482

I recommend you try SimpleHTMLDom, it's a PHP library i use for processing xml like documents.

You could easily go like so:

require_once("/path/to/simplehtmldom/library");
$parsed_data = array();
//we next need to create a dom object --
//case 1: let me assume the HTML is in a string
$dom_object = str_get_html($html_string);
//case 2: it's at a particular url
$dom_object = file_get_html("http://www.site-with-the-content.com");
//now we have our object
$links = $dom_object->find("ul li a");
//finds all the <a> tags on the page inside <ul>, you could filter it 
//using class or ids like with jQuery if you like
foreach($links as $link){
    $parsed_data[] = array(
        "link"=>$link->href,
        "text"=>$link->innertext
    );
}
//You can now go through your array of parsed content and insert into your DB

Hope this help :)

SimpleHTMLDom Sourceforge project

Upvotes: 0

James Holderness
James Holderness

Reputation: 23001

Assuming your HTML is stored in the string $content, you could use PHP DOM to extract the various list items without having to resort to regex.

$dom = DOMDocument::loadHTML($content);
$lists = $dom->getElementsByTagName('ul');
foreach($lists as $list) {
  $id = $list->getAttribute('id');
  $links = $list->getElementsByTagName('a');
  foreach ($links as $link) {
    $href = $link->getAttribute('href');
    $text = $link->nodeValue;
    // insert $id, $text and $href into the data here 
  }
}

Upvotes: 3

Phil Cross
Phil Cross

Reputation: 9302

You could use regex just fine:

preg_match_all('/<a href=\"(.*?)\"[.*]?>(.*?)<\/a>/i', $string, $matches);

$insert = array();

foreach($matches as $val)
{
    /* DONT FORGET TO ESCAPE YOUR DATA IF NEEDED */
    $url = $val[0];
    $name = $val[1];

    $insert[] = 'INSERT INTO tableName (url, name) VALUES ("' . $url . '", "' . $name . '")';
}

print_r($insert);

Upvotes: 1

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