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Re: Simplify HTML programatically

by trwww (Priest)
on Jun 08, 2006 at 06:29 UTC ( [id://554219]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Simplify HTML programatically

I use SAX for this. For me it provides the best performance/maintainability ratio.

Here is a standalone program that takes a html file name as an argument and prints the output to STDOUT.

Its purpose is to strip all tags except p, div, and a tags.

The program driver sets up the SAX pipeline. It uses XML::Driver::HTML as the SAX driver and XML::SAX::Writer as the writer.

When parse is called on the driver, the Pipeline sends the driver's stream to some helper modules, to our filter module, and finally the writer.

In the custom filter, start_element is called for each tag. The code checks to see if the tag is either an a, div, or p tag, and if it is, it forwards the tag to the writer. Otherwise, the tag is ignored and removed from the stream.

The same work needs to happen in the end_element callback.

  • benefits:
    • Accepts non-well-formed html and outputs well formed xml.
    • Scales well. In theory it should use a constant amount of memory.
    • High level of control of the output document
  • drawbacks:
    • need to learn SAX
    • if you remove a node from the stream in the start_element callback you have to remove the closing tag in the end_element callback (this isn't so much of a "drawback" but more of a reminder that you have to stay on your toes).
use warnings; use strict; use XML::SAX::Machines qw(Pipeline); use XML::Driver::HTML; use XML::Filter::SAX1toSAX2; use XML::Filter::BufferText; use XML::SAX::Writer; my $output; # transformation target my $writer = XML::SAX::Writer->new( Output => \$output ); my $machine = Pipeline( 'XML::Filter::SAX1toSAX2' => 'XML::Filter::BufferText' => 'XML::Filter::HtmlTagStripper' => $writer ); my $html = new XML::Driver::HTML( Handler => $machine, Source => { SystemId => $ARGV[0] } ); $html->parse(); print $output; package XML::Filter::HtmlTagStripper; use base qw|XML::SAX::Base|; # <marker language="foo" /> # $el->{Name} == 'marker' # $el->{Attributes}{'{}language'} == language attribute # $el->{Attributes}{'{}language'}{Value} == 'foo' sub start_element { my($self, $el) = @_; if ( $el->{Name} =~ m/^(?:p|div|a)$/i ) { $self->SUPER::start_element( $el ); } } sub end_element { my($self, $el) = @_; if ( $el->{Name} =~ m/^(?:p|div|a)$/i ) { $self->SUPER::end_element( $el ); } } 1;

I know its not the most un-rocket-sciencey thing in the world, but its not too tricky, and once it clicks in your head and you realize that this is high performance xml parsing, the possibilities are boggling.

Lets take a look at a run:

$ cat striptags.html <html> <head> <title>Test Document</title> </head> <body> <p>The first paragraph</p> <p>the second paragraph</p> <hr width="75%"> <div>last modified: WHENEVER</div> </body> </html> $ perl striptags.pl striptags.html Test Document<p>The first paragraph</p><p>the second paragraph</p><div +>last modified: WHENEVER</div>
Enjoy, Todd W.

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Re^2: Simplify HTML programatically
by hobbs (Monk) on Jun 09, 2006 at 05:09 UTC
    For something of a simpler* solution, but in the same vein, there's HTML::TreeBuilder. HTML::Element provides all of the primitives that you really need for an operation like this: look_down to identify relevant elements, replace_with_content to "remove" a tag without removing what it contains, and delete to completely destroy all signs of a given element. I'm not up to writing an example right now, but it's truly simple. Give it a shot! It goes a long way, and the output is bound to be less of a mess than the input.

    * edit: okay, I realized that some might be confused by this usage of simple, since trwww's example is pretty simple in itself. Mostly it's a matter of being allowed to think in terms of tree manipulations instead of opens and closes and stacking and de-stacking. The corresponding cost is in storage, but it's usually not worrisome.

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