[Htmlparser-user] StringBean.getStrings() problem

[Soumya <sou...@ya...>]

Hi,

 I have spent a couple of days getting htmlparser work the way I need it to.
 The problem I have now is that my page has a nested table (tables inside table) and I want the
individual table contents.
 Through NodeList I am able to loop and get the individual tables. Now, I want to get only the
text and not the html, so I thought of going by the remark by Nick Burch in the StringBean class
as follows,

* You can also use the StringBean as a NodeVisitor on your own parser,
 * in which case you have to refetch your page if you change one of the
 * properties because it resets the Strings property:</p>
 * <pre>
 *     StringBean sb = new StringBean ();
 *     Parser parser = new Parser ("http://cbc.ca");
 *     parser.visitAllNodesWith (sb);
 *     String s = sb.getStrings ();
 *     sb.setLinks (true);
 *     parser.reset ();
 *     parser.visitAllNodesWith (sb);
 *     String sl = sb.getStrings ();

My Parser.getStringsForMe() code looks like the following :

public String getStringsForMe() {
 
            StringBuffer resultPage = new StringBuffer(); 
            this.setResource (pageURL);
            NodeList nl = this.parse(null);
            TagNameFilter tableFilter = new TagNameFilter("table");
            tableFilter.setName("totalTable");

           NodeList tableNodes = nl.extractAllNodesThatMatch(filter, true);
            SimpleNodeIterator it = tableNodes.elements();   
            
            StringBean sb = new StringBean();              
            
            while (it.hasMoreNodes()) {
            	Node node = it.nextNode();
            	if (node.getText().contains("id=\"totalTable\"")) {            		
            		String inputHTML = node.toHtml();
            		this.setInputHTML(inputHTML); // set the content to parse
            		NodeList totalTableChildren = this.parse(new TagNameFilter("table"));
            		
            		SimpleNodeIterator it1 = totalTableChildren.elements();
            		while (it1.hasMoreNodes()) {
            			Node childTableNode = it1.nextNode();            			
            			String tableContent = childTableNode.toString();
            			this.setInputHTML(tableContent);
            			this.visitAllNodesWith(sb);
            			resultPage.append(sb.getStrings());
            			this.reset();
            			sb.setLinks(false);            			            			
            		}
            	}                                                  
            }    
  return resultPage;
}

The sb.getStrings() returns the same text every time, since the StringBean.getStrings()  checks if
mStrings is null and then proceeds to set / update strings. In the case as above where the
StringBean is repeatedly used to getStrings(), after the first visit, StringBean.mStrings remains
not-null and hence the newly extracted contents in StringBean.mBuffer are not appended to
mStrings.

I have made it work for me. I needed to know if there is anything else I am missing or is this a
bug for cases like mine.

thanks in advance,
Soumya


 
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