CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpdomxpath
wakey
wakey

Reputation: 2409

Retrieve the contents of a div from external site (PHP, XPATH)?

I am trying to retrieve and echo the content of a div from an external site using PHP and xPath.

This is an excerpt from the page, showing the relevant code:

<html xml:lang="en" lang="en" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
  <head><title>Handbags - Clutches - Kara Ross New York</title></head>
  <body>
    <div id="Container">
      <div id="AjaxLoading">...</div> ...
      <div id="Wrapper">
        <div class="productlist-page"> ...
          <div class="Content Wide " id="LayoutColumn1"> ...
            <div align="center">
              <div class="Block CategoryContent Moveable Panel" id="CategoryContent">
                <form name="frmCompare" id="frmCompare">
                  <table><tr><td valign="top">...</td>
                      <td valign="top">
                        <ul class="ProductList ">
                         <li class="Odd">
                           <div class="ProductImage QuickView" data-product="261">
                             <a href="http://www.kararossny.com/electra-clutch-in-oil-spill-lizard-and-hologram-with-gunmetal-hardware-and-hematite/">
                               <img src="http://cdn2.bigcommerce.com/n-arxsrf/t0qdc/products/261/images/1382/electra_oil_spill__08182.1402652812.500.375.jpg?c=2" alt="Kara Ross Electra Clutch in Oil Spill Lizard and Hologram with Gunmetal Hardware and Hematite Gemstone on Closure"/>
                             </a>
                           </div>
                           <div class="ProductDetails">...</div>
                           <div class="ProductPriceRating">...</div>
                           <div class="ProductCompareButton" style="display:none">...</div>
                           <div class="ProductActionAdd" style="display:none;">...</div>
                         </li>
                        </ul>
                      </td>
                      <td valign="top" align="center">...</td>
                    </tr>
                  </table>
                  <div class="product-nav btm"> ... </div>
                </form>
   ...

This is my code so far:

$url = 'http://www.kararossny.com/clutches/?sort=featured&page=1';

$dom = new DOMDocument;
@$dom->loadHTMLFile($url);

$xpath = new DOMXpath($dom);
$elements = $xpath->query('//div[class="ProductImage QuickView"]');

foreach($elements[0] as $child) {
   echo $child . "\n";
}

My desired output for the page linked would be:

<a href="http://www.kararossny.com/electra-clutch-in-oil-spill-lizard-and-hologram-with-gunmetal-hardware-and-hematite/">
    <img src="http://cdn2.bigcommerce.com/n-arxsrf/t0qdc/products/261/images/1382/electra_oil_spill__08182.1402652812.500.375.jpg?c=2" alt="Kara Ross Electra Clutch in Oil Spill Lizard and Hologram with Gunmetal Hardware and Hematite Gemstone on Closure"/>
</a>

Any idea what I am doing wrong? I think my xpath might be wrong, but I am not sure.

Thanks!

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2539

Answers (3)

helderdarocha
helderdarocha

Reputation: 23627

There are three reasons why you are probably not being able to select the code you want.

1 - To select your class attribute in your XPath predicate you need to use the attribute axis. Either prefix the attribute name with attribute:: or with an @ sign. So you should use 

@class

to select the class attribute.

2 - An XPath expression is made of one or more steps. Each step defines a context that limits the scope of the next step. The last step contains the set you are selecting. Since your last step is a div, you are actually selecting a div, and not an a. You should use the following expression to select the a node and its contents:

//div[@class="ProductImage QuickView"]/a

3 - Finally, your page has a default namespace declaration: 

xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"

That will require you to either register it or ignore it selecting your elements using wildcards (not by their names, but using *). Most XPath APIs do not automatically set default namespaces, and if a namespace is not used to qualify XPath selectors, it considers unprefixed elements as belonging to no namespaces. That means that if you try to select a <div> using the expression //div, you may get an empty set. If you are not selecting anything, try ignoring namespaces like this:

//*[local-name()='div'][@class="ProductImage QuickView"]/*[local-name()='a']

Upvotes: 2

user1978142
user1978142

Reputation: 7948

You forgot to add @ on the class and a at the end on your query, since to targeting the link. After that, use saveHTML() to get it. Consider this example:

$url = 'http://www.kararossny.com/clutches/?sort=featured&page=1';
$dom = new DOMDocument();
@$dom->loadHTMLFile($url);
$xpath = new DOMXpath($dom);
$elements = $xpath->query('//div[@class="ProductImage QuickView"]/a');
$link = $dom->saveHTML($elements->item(0));
echo $link;

Upvotes: 4

har07
har07

Reputation: 89315

Yes, your XPath is a bit off.

In XPath, to filter element by it's attribute value you have to use @ at the beginning of the attribute name. So your XPath should've been as follow :

//div[@class="ProductImage QuickView"]

Upvotes: 3

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