Question

Is it possible to have an xml output from webpage using web::scraper in perl. as an example, My html looks like follows(I took some part of html from URL):

   > <table class="reference">
    >     <tr>
    >     <th width="23%" align="left">Property</th>
    >     <th width="71%" align="left">Description</th>
    >     <th style="text-align:center;">DOM</th>
    >     </tr>
    >     <tr>
    >       <td><a href="prop_node_attributes.asp">attributes</a></td>
    >       <td>Returns a collection of a node's attributes</td>
    >       <td style="text-align:center;">1</td>
    >     </tr>
    >     
    >     <tr>
    >       <td><a href="prop_node_baseuri.asp">baseURI</a></td>
    >       <td>Returns the absolute base URI of a node</td>
    >       <td style="text-align:center;">3</td>
    >     </tr>
    >     <tr>
    >       <td><a href="prop_node_childnodes.asp">childNodes</a></td>
    >       <td>Returns a NodeList of child nodes for a node</td>
    >       <td style="text-align:center;">1</td>
    >     </tr>
    >     <tr>
    >       <td><a href="prop_node_firstchild.asp">firstChild</a></td>
    >       <td>Returns the first child of a node</td>
    >       <td style="text-align:center;">1</td>
    >     </tr>
    >     <tr>
    >       <td><a href="prop_node_lastchild.asp">lastChild</a></td>
    >       <td>Returns the last child of a node</td>
    >       <td style="text-align:center;">1</td>
    >     </tr>
    >     <tr>
    >       <td><a href="prop_node_localname.asp">localName</a></td>
    >       <td>Returns the local part of the name of a node</td>
    >       <td style="text-align:center;">2</td>
    >     </tr>
    >     <tr>
    >       <td><a href="prop_node_namespaceuri.asp">namespaceURI</a></td>
    >       <td>Returns the namespace URI of a node</td>
    >       <td style="text-align:center;">2</td>
    >     </tr>
    >     <tr>
    >       <td><a href="prop_node_nextsibling.asp">nextSibling</a></td>
    >       <td>Returns the next node at the same node tree level</td>
    >       <td style="text-align:center;">1</td>
    >     </tr>
    >     <tr>
    >       <td><a href="prop_node_nodename.asp">nodeName</a></td>
    >       <td>Returns the name of a node, depending on its type</td>
    >       <td style="text-align:center;">1</td>
    >     </tr>
    >     <tr>
    >       <td><a href="prop_node_nodetype.asp">nodeType</a></td>
    >       <td>Returns the type of a node</td>
    >       <td style="text-align:center;">1</td>
    >     </tr>
    >     <tr>
    >       <td><a href="prop_node_nodevalue.asp">nodeValue</a></td>
    >       <td>Sets or returns the value of a node, depending on its 
    >       type</td>
    >       <td style="text-align:center;">1</td>
    >     </tr>
    >     <tr>
    >       <td><a href="prop_node_ownerdocument.asp">ownerDocument</a></td>
    >       <td>Returns the root element (document object) for a node</td>
    >       <td style="text-align:center;">2</td>
    >     </tr>
    >     <tr>
    >       <td><a href="prop_node_parentnode.asp">parentNode</a></td>
    >       <td>Returns the parent node of a node</td>
    >       <td style="text-align:center;">1</td>
    >     </tr>
    >     <tr>
    >       <td><a href="prop_node_prefix.asp">prefix</a></td>
    >       <td>Sets or returns the namespace prefix of a node</td>
    >       <td style="text-align:center;">2</td>
    >     </tr>
    >     <tr>
    >       <td><a href="prop_node_previoussibling.asp">previousSibling</a></td>
    >       <td>Returns the previous node at the same node tree level</td>
    >       <td style="text-align:center;">1</td>
    >     </tr>
    >     <tr>
    >       <td><a href="prop_node_textcontent.asp">textContent</a></td>
    >       <td>Sets or returns the textual content of a node and its 
    >       descendants</td>
    >       <td style="text-align:center;">3</td>
    >     </tr>
    >     </table>

SO my perl code goes like:

    #!/usr/bin/perl
    use warnings;
    use strict;
    use URI;
    use Web::Scraper;

    # website to scrape
    my $urlToScrape = "http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/dom_obj_node.asp";

    my $rennersdata = scraper {
    process "table.reference > tr > td > a", 'renners[]' => 'TEXT';
 process "table.reference > tr > td:nth-of-type(2)", 'landrenner[]' => 'TEXT';
  process "table.reference > tr > td:nth-of-type(3)", 'dom[]' => 'TEXT';
     };

    my $res = $teamsdata->scrape(URI->new($urlToScrape));

for my $i (0 .. $#{$res->{renners}}) {
    print "<PropertyList>\n";
print "<Property>\n";
print "<Name> ";
    print $res->{renners}[$i];
    print "\n";
print "</Name>";
 print "\n";
print "</Property>\n";
print "</PropertyList>\n";
    }

for my $j (0 .. $#{$res->{landrenner}}) {
    print "<ReturnValue>\n";
    print $res->{landrenner}[$j];
    print "\n";
 print "</ReturnValue>\n";
    }

for my $k (0 .. $#{$res->{dom}}) {
    print "<domversion>\n";
    print $res->{dom}[$k];
    print "\n";
 print "</domversion>\n";
    }

when I am running the above code, I get all the output as follows:

<PropertyList>
<Property>
<Name>attributes</Name>
<Property>
<PropertyList>
<PropertyList>
<Property>
<Name>baseURI</Name>
<Property>
<PropertyList>
...
<ReturnValue>
Returns a collection of a node's attributes
</ReturnValue>
....
<domversion>
1
</domversion>
....

Is it possible that I can get the output as follows:

<PropertyList>
<Property>
<Name>attributes</Name>
<ReturnValue>Returns a collection of a node's attributes</ReturnValue>
<DOMVersion>1</DOMVersion>
</Property> 
</PropertyList>

How can I combine the above three forloops in order to get output as above?

Many Thanks

Answer 1

You just need to move your output into the first for loop. Since you’ve an equal number of items in each of the three keys in $res, you can just use $i to access all of the individual items. You’ll get the three values that belong to each other with your iteration from $i.

for my $i (0 .. $#{$res->{renners}}) {
  print <<"XML";
<PropertyList>
  <Property>
    <Name>$res->{renners}[$i]</Name>
    <ReturnValue>$res->{landrenner}[$i]</ReturnValue>
    <domversion>$res->{dom}[$i]</domversion>
  </Property>
</PropertyList>
XML
}

I changed the print statements to use a HERE doc because it is more easily readable. I also changed the line my $res = $teamsdata->scrape(URI->new($urlToScrape)); to my $res = $rennersdata->scrape(URI->new($urlToScrape)); because $teamsdata was not declared.