PERL Beginners - Retrieving and Parsing Particular Data From a Website

Author

Retrieving and Parsing Particular Data From a Website

Danny Favela

2006-10-30, 7:03 pm

Ishnu'alah.

I'm trying to get particular data from a website. The data is in a
table. I am to:

1. Parse the source code and locate the string indicating that the
data related to that item will soon follow.

2. Retrieve that data. The data changes every day, so it's not an
issue of simply looking for the same string and float every time.

Thanks. I can provide more details if needed.

-danny

Tom Phoenix

2006-10-30, 7:03 pm

On 10/25/06, Danny Favela <dfavela@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm trying to get particular data from a website. The data is in a
> table. I am to:
>
> 1. Parse the source code and locate the string indicating that the
> data related to that item will soon follow.
>
> 2. Retrieve that data. The data changes every day, so it's not an
> issue of simply looking for the same string and float every time.

I recommend that you use a Perl program for this task. Perl is an
excellent language for simple programs like this. One reason is the
power of regular expressions to parse text and extract data; another
is the strength of modules (such as LWP and HTML::Parser) that you can
find on CPAN:

http://search.cpan.org/

Hope this helps!

--Tom Phoenix
Stonehenge Perl Training

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