Question

My code i use to parse HTMl is this below, and the 2nd code is how i call on it to populate an array for a simplelist.

The problem i have is it take upwards of 5 or 6 seconds to download, parse and display the data, which is far too long.

What is a way to speed up the process so its as close so instant as possible

Also, just so its clear i hard coded the url into the 2nd bit of code, once done, that will be passed in, depending on waht route, direction and stop you use.

public ArrayList<String> getStops(String URL) {
    ArrayList<String> BusStop = new ArrayList<String>();
    String HTML = DownloadText(URL);
    String temp = null;
    String temp2[] = new String[40];
    Pattern p = Pattern.compile("<a class=\"ada\".*</a>", Pattern.DOTALL);

    Matcher m = p.matcher(HTML);
    while (m.find()) {
        temp = m.group();
        temp2 = temp.split("<br></td>");
    }

    for (int i = 0; i < temp2.length; i++) {
        temp = temp2[i];
        temp = temp.replaceAll("<a class=\"ada\" title=\"", "");
        temp = temp.replaceAll("\".*\"", "");
        temp = temp.replaceAll("\n", "");
        temp = temp.replaceAll("\t", "");
        temp = temp.replaceAll(",</a>", "");
        temp = temp.replaceAll("</tr>.*>", "");
        temp = temp.replaceAll("<td.*>", "");
        temp = temp.replaceAll(">.*", "");
        BusStop.add(temp);
    }

    return BusStop;
}

..

TransitXMLExtractor extractor;
static String baseURL5 = "http://www.ltconline.ca/webwatch/ada.aspx?r=1&d=2";

/** Populates string array with bus routes */
public String[] busStopArray() {
    extractor = new TransitXMLExtractor();
    String[] busStopArray = new String[31];

    for (int n = 0; n < busStopArray.length; n++) {
        busStopArray[n] = extractor.getStops(baseURL5).get(n);
    }
    return busStopArray;

}

Answer 1

It seems like you could speed things up by pulling the exact text you want with the regular expression and reducing the parsing loop.

public ArrayList<String> getStops(String URL) {
    ArrayList<String> BusStop = new ArrayList<String>();
    String HTML = DownloadText(URL);
    Pattern p = Pattern.compile("<a class=\"ada\" title=\"([\\w\\s]+)\"");

    Matcher m = p.matcher(HTML);
    while (m.find()) {
        BusStop.add(m.group(1));
    }

    return BusStop;
}

Also, the calling bit could just be:

public String[] busStopArray() {
    extractor = new TransitXMLExtractor();

    return extractor.getStops(baseURL5).toArray(new String[0]);
}

The way I have it now, it should pull the text in the title attribute from each link of class ‘ada’.

EDIT: To be clear, it should actually pull the the <a class="ada" title="(whatever)", one at a time with the group(1) getting the (whatever) text for you.

EDIT 2: I updated the examples to match what I found to be working code. Also, here is the entire Activity I used to test with:

package com.kiswa.test;

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;
import java.net.URL;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.util.Log;

public class TestActivity extends Activity {
    /** Called when the activity is first created. */
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        for (String stop : busStopArray()) {
            sb.append(stop);
        }
        Log.d("STRING_TEST", sb.toString());

        setContentView(R.layout.main);
    }

    public String DownloadText() throws UnsupportedEncodingException, IOException {
        Log.d("STRING_TEST", "In DownloadText");
        URL url = new URL("http://www.ltconline.ca/webwatch/ada.aspx?r=1&d=2");
        BufferedReader reader = null;
        StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
        try {
            reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(url.openStream(), "UTF-8"));
            for (String line; (line = reader.readLine()) != null;) {
                builder.append(line.trim());
            }
        } finally {
            if (reader != null) try { reader.close(); } catch (IOException logOrIgnore) {}
        }

        return builder.toString();
    }

    public ArrayList<String> getStops() {
        Log.d("STRING_TEST", "In getStops");
        ArrayList<String> BusStop = new ArrayList<String>();
        String HTML = "";
        try {
            HTML = DownloadText();
        } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        Pattern p = Pattern.compile("<a class=\"ada\" title=\"([\\w\\s]+)\"");

        Matcher m = p.matcher(HTML);
        while (m.find()) {
            BusStop.add(m.group(1));
        }

        return BusStop;
    }

    public String[] busStopArray() {
        Log.d("STRING_TEST", "In busStopArray");
        return getStops().toArray(new String[0]);
    }
}