html dom parser to extract href from span sibiling

Question

Here is my html file contains date and a link in <span> tag within a table. Can anyone help me find the link of a particular date. view link of particular date

<table>
<tbody>
<tr class="c0">
<td class="c11">
<td class="c8">
<ul class="c2 lst-kix_h6z8amo254ry-0 start">
<li class="c1">
<span>1st Apr 2014 - </span>
<span class="c6"><a class="c4" href="/link.html">View</a>
</span>
</li>
</ul>
</td>
</tr>
</td>
</table>

I want to retrieve the link for particular date

MY CODE IS LIKE THIS

include('simple_html_dom.php');    
$html = file_get_html('link.html');
//store the links in array
foreach($html->find('span') as $value)
{
    //echo $value->plaintext . '<br />';
    $date = $value->plaintext;

    if (strpos($date,$compare_text)) {
         //$linkeachday = $value->find('span[class=c1]')->href;
        //$day_url[] = $value->href;
        //$day_url = Array("text" => $value->plaintext);
        $day_url = Array("text" => $date, "link" =>$linkeachday);
        //echo $value->next_sibling (a);
    }
}

or

$spans = $html->find('table',0)->find('li')->find('span');
echo $spans;
 $num = null;
 foreach($spans as $span){
     if($span->plaintext == $compare_text){
        $next_span = $span->next_sibling();
        $num = $next_span->plaintext;
         echo($num);    
        break; 
     }
 }
 echo($num);

Answer 1

You were on the right path with your last example...

I modified it a bit to get the following which basically gets all spans, then test if they have the searched text, and if so, it displays the content of their next sibling if there is any (check the in code comments):

$input =  <<<_DATA_
    <table>
        <tbody>
            <tr class="c0">
                <td class="c11">
                    <td class="c8">
                        <ul class="c2 lst-kix_h6z8amo254ry-0 start">
                            <li class="c1">
                                <span>1st Apr 2013 - </span>
                                <span>1st Apr 2014 - </span>
                                <span class="c6">
                                    <a class="c4" href="/link.html">View</a>
                                </span>
                                <span>1st Apr 2015 - </span>
                            </li>
                        </ul>
                    </td>
                </td>
            </tr>
        </tbody>
    </table>
_DATA_;

// Create a DOM object
$html = new simple_html_dom();
// Load HTML from a string
$html->load($input);

// Searched value
$searchDate = '1st Apr 2014';

// Find all the spans direct childs of li, which is a descendent of table
$spans = $html->find('table li > span');

// Loop through all the spans
foreach ($spans as $span) {
    // If the span starts with the searched text && has a following sibling
    if ( strpos($span->plaintext, $searchDate) === 0 && $sibling = $span->next_sibling()) {
        // Then, print it's text content
        echo $sibling->plaintext;    // or ->innertext for raw content
        // And stop (if only one result is needed)
        break;
    }
}

OUTPUT

View

For the string comparison, you may also (for the best) use regex...

So in the code above, you add this to build your pattern:

$pattern = sprintf('~^\s*%s~i', preg_quote($searchDate, '~'));

And then use preg_match to test the match:

if ( preg_match($pattern, $span->plaintext) && $sibling = $span->next_sibling()) {

Answer 2

I don't know about simple HTML DOM but the built in PHP DOM library should suffice.

Say you have your date in a string like this...

$date = '1st Apr 2014';

You can easily find the corresponding link using an XPath expression. For example

$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc->loadHTMLFile('link.html');

$xp = new DOMXpath($doc);
$query = sprintf('//span[starts-with(., "%s")]/following-sibling::span/a', $date);

$links = $xp->query($query);
if ($links->length) {
    $href = $links->item(0)->getAttribute('href');
}

Answer 3

    include('simple_html_dom.php');

    $html = file_get_html('link.html');
        $compare_text = "1st Apr 2013";


        $tds = $html->find('table',1)->find('span');

        $num = 0;
         foreach($tds as $td){

        if (strpos($td->plaintext, $compare_text) !== false){

                $next_td = $td->next_sibling();
                    foreach($next_td->find('a') as $elm) {
                    $num = $elm->href;
                    }
             //$day_url =   array($day => array(daylink => $day, text => $td->plaintext, link => $num));
echo $td->plaintext. "<br />";
echo $num . "<br />";
             }

         }