Question

I have the folling Perl script that I am using to import data directly into a database form an html file. The file is called ‘demo.htm’. The script works without the databse connection part in that it strips off what I do not need. However now I am trying to read in the html file and input into the database and these adaptations are not working. The db, user and password are all ‘demo’ and it is using a SQL server 2008 R2 database.

use warnings; 
use strict;  
use DBI;
use HTML::TreeBuilder;  

open (FILE, "demo") || die "couldn't open the file!";
open (F1, ">demo.htm") || die "couldn't open the file!";
open (F2, ">demo2.csv") || die "couldn't open the file!";

# database name, user and password
my $data_source = q/dbi:ODBC:demo/;
my $user = q/demo/;
my $password = q/demo/;

# Connect to the data source and get a handle for that connection.
my $dbh = DBI->connect($data_source, $user, $password)
or die "Can't connect to $data_source: $DBI::errstr";

print F1 "Name\|Lives In\|Commented\n";
print F2 "Name\|Lives In\|Commented\text\n";

my $tree = HTML::TreeBuilder->new_from_content(     do { local $/; <DATA> } ); 

for ( $tree->look_down( 'class' => 'postbody' ) ) 
{    
my $location = $_->look_down( 'class' => 'posthilit' )->as_trimmed_text;     

my $comment  = $_->look_down( 'class' => 'content' )->as_trimmed_text;     

my $name     = $_->look_down( '_tag'  => 'h3' )->as_text;     

$name =~ s/^Re:\s*//;     $name =~ s/\s*$location\s*$//;      

print "Name: $name\nLives in: $location\nCommented: $comment\n"; } 

# This query generates a result set with one record in it.
#my $sql = "SELECT 1 AS test_col";

my $sql = "insert into demo2 values \(Name, Lives In, Comeented, text)";

print $sql;
print "\n";

# Prepare the statement.
my $sth = $dbh->prepare($sql)
or die "Can't prepare statement: $DBI::errstr";

# Execute the statement.
$sth->execute();

}
print $b;
print " end\n";

# Disconnect the database from the database handle.
$dbh->disconnect;

Any help on where I have gone wrong with this would be greatly appreciated. An example of the html is –

<div class="postbody">         <h3><a href "foo">Re: John Smith <span class="posthilit">England</span></a></h3>         <div class="content">Is C# better than Visula Basic?</div>     </div> 

Answer 1

In your SQL query you should use data that you extracted.

my $sql = "insert into demo2 values (?,?,?,?)";
...
$sth->execute($name,$location,$comment,'');