Question

So I have some HTML text that I would like to display in a tableView.

I have two UITableView cells. A quote cell and a ‘non-quote’ cell.

I need to be able to break this HTML up into an array where the quotes are displayed properly

In other words The following html:

<div class='comment'>
     This is some text before the quote
     <div class='quote'>
         This is some text in a quote
     </div>
     This is between the quotes
     <div class='quote'>
             This is text in another quote
         <div class='unrelatedDiv'>
             this is in an unrelated div
         </div>
     </div>
      This is some text after the quote
</div> 

Would look something like this in an array when finished.
This would then be loaded into my tableView which would know there are 5 sections and that 1 and 3 are suppose to be quotes.

[0] => "This is some text before the quote"
[1] => "This is some text in a quote"
[2] => "This is between the quotes"
[3] => "This is text in another quote \n this is in an unrelated div"
[4] => "This is some text after the quote"

Answer 1

I would use DTHTMLParser from the DTCoreText project for this. It is an Objective-C wrapper around libxml2.

For your example HTML, you would see delegate calls such as these, in the order of their appearance:

2012-03-13 didStartElement: div attributes: { class = comment; }

2012-03-13 foundCharacters: This is some text before the quote

2012-03-13 didStartElement: div attributes: { class = quote; }

2012-03-13 foundCharacters: This is some text in a quote

2012-03-13 didEndElement: div

2012-03-13 foundCharacters: This is between the quotes

2012-03-13 didStartElement: div attributes: { class = quote; }

2012-03-13 foundCharacters: This is text in another quote

2012-03-13 didStartElement: div attributes: { class = unrelatedDiv; }

2012-03-13 foundCharacters: this is in an unrelated div

2012-03-13 didEndElement: div

2012-03-13 foundCharacters:

2012-03-13 didEndElement: div

2012-03-13 foundCharacters: This is some text after the quote

2012-03-13 didEndElement: div

So you can basically just use the [DTHTMLParser parser:foundCharacters:] delegate method.