Question

Here is the code that I used to scrape the name and the url but every name starts with ~.
I would like to delete the ~ part. I’ve tried using str_replace but it doesn’t seem right from looking at it. (also tested it and same result)

foreach ($div_category as &$div){
    $a_list = $div->find("a");
    foreach ( $a_list as &$anchor){
        //put the data into an array and then write array out to a csv file.
        $csv_array=array($anchor->plaintext, $anchor->getAttribute("href") );
        $anchor = str_replace( '~', ' ', $anchor);
        fputcsv($csv_out, $csv_array);

current result example:

name      url
~john     www.john.com
~bob      www.bob.com
~rob      www.rob.com

Answer 1

<?php
$str = "~~~~~~";
$str = str_replace("~","!",$str);
echo $str;
?>

Works for me. So the replacing part should be fine. You must be addressing the attribute of your anchor ‘incorrectly’. Try printing the anchor with:

print_r($anchor) 

to see what attribute you should be using

EDIT:

foreach ($div_category as &$div){
    $a_list = $div->find("a");
    foreach ( $a_list as &$anchor){
        //put the data into an array and then write array out to a csv file.
   ->   $csv_array=array($anchor->plaintext, $anchor->getAttribute("href") ); // line X
   ->   $anchor = str_replace( '~', ' ', $anchor);                            // line Y
        fputcsv($csv_out, $csv_array);

The problem is the order of the X and Y lines marked with arrows. Switch them around and it should be working.

EDIT2:

and

$anchor = str_replace( '~', ' ', $anchor);

should be

$anchor->plaintext = str_replace( '~', '', $anchor->plaintext);