Perl

rjcrews · 06-13-2006, 12:46 PM

Hi all -

I am trying to parse some HTML I grabbed with the WWW:Mechanize class.

Here is the code:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use WWW::Mechanize;
use HTTP::Cookies;

my $outfile = "out.htm";
my $url = "http://mytestpage/";
my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();

$mech->cookie_jar(HTTP::Cookies->new());
$mech->get($url);
my $output_page = $mech->content();

ParseLines(@$output_page);
print "finsihed\n";

sub ParseLines
{

  my (@lines) = @_;
  #my ($rx);
  my $rx;
  my $line;
  foreach $line (@lines)
  {
        if($line =~ m/ReportTitle/){

          $rx="found it";

        }
  }

print $rx;
}

The mechanize part is fine, but i get this for an error:

Code:

mybox:/usr/lib/cgi-bin# perl test5.pl
Can't use string ("<html>
        <head>
                <!--<meta htt") as an ARRAY ref while "strict refs" in use at test5.pl line 20.

The top of the HTML is

Code:

<html>
        <head>
                <!--<meta http-equiv="REFRESH" content="; URL=">-->

Any ideas how to get the script to parse it?

Thanks

theNbomr · 06-13-2006, 03:50 PM

Without having tried to actually run your code, I'll hazard a guess that the line

Code:

 
my (@lines) = @_;

should really be

Code:

  
my @lines = @_;

--- rod.

rjcrews · 06-14-2006, 08:44 AM

That change did not correct the problem.

The code works fine for other "files", I am trying to determine why the HTML chunk I grab is unable to be parsed the same way. Is there something in there that perl does not like?

Code:

<html>
        <head>
                <!--<meta http-equiv="REFRESH" content="; URL=">-->
                <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
                <title></title>

chrism01 · 06-15-2006, 02:56 AM

Looks like it's not recognising end-of-line char(s)? Maybe the diff between page created/stored on MSWin/IIS vs Linux ?

rjcrews · 06-15-2006, 08:47 PM

I changed the variable being passed from an array to a normal variable:

Code:

ParseLines(@$output_page);

Code:

ParseLines($output_page);

And the error goes away, but I am having problems parsing it still. It is an ASP generated script, so you may be correct. I am looking at removing all HTML tags from it then trying again.

Thanks!

rjcrews · 06-15-2006, 09:19 PM

Using HTML::TokeParser::Simple I was able to remove basically everything, and parse it that way.

Thanks for the help, there was a problem with the end of line, or lack thereof. (When i used the HTML::TokeParser::Simple I received 1 long line.) I added line breaks in place of the tags..and we are good to go!