Question

I have a curl script that ends like this:

  $data = curl_exec($ch);

  curl_close($ch);

  return $data;

}

The $data string it a HTML page with a table on that I want to strip so that I can store the data into a MYSQL database, I have tried using DOM with commands such as:

  // new dom object
  $dom = new DOMDocument();

  //load the html
  $html = str_get_html($returned_content2);
   $dom->strictErrorChecking = false;


  //discard white space 
  $dom->preserveWhiteSpace = false; 

  //the table by its tag name
  $tables = $dom->getElementsByTagName('table'); 

  //get all rows from the table
  $rows = $tables->item(0)->getElementsByTagName('tr'); 

  // loop over the table rows
  foreach ($rows as $row) 
  { 
   // get each column by tag name
      $cols = $row->getElementsByTagName('td'); 
   // echo the values  
      echo $cols->item(0)->nodeValue.'<br />'; 
      echo $cols->item(1)->nodeValue.'<br />'; 
      echo $cols->item(2)->nodeValue;
    } 
}

But keep getting the error:

Fatal error: Call to a member function getElementsByTagName() on a non-object in /home/sdsd/dfdsfsdfds/sdfsdfs/table.php on line 178

Answer 1

You aren’t loading the HTML into your DOMDocument at all. Remove this line

$html = str_get_html($returned_content2);

and place this after your preserveWhiteSpace line

$dom->loadHTML($returned_content2);

Before attempting to fetch table rows, you should make sure you’ve found at least one table, eg

$tables = $dom->getElementsByTagName('table');
if ($tables->length == 0) {
    throw new Exception('No tables found');
}