How to extract HTML and put in php associative array?

Question

I have a php variable which contains a html document. I'm trying to extract li>span and li>strong into some sort of associative array.

The html in the $html variable is

<ul class="ul-data" xmlns:utils="urn:utils" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <li><span>
          Vehicle make
        </span><strong>CITROEN</strong></li>
  <li><span>
            Year of manufacture
          </span><strong>1997</strong></li>
  <li><span>
          Cylinder capacity (cc)
        </span><strong>1124cc
        </strong></li>
  <li><span>
          Fuel type
        </span><strong>PETROL</strong></li>
  <li><span>
          Vehicle colour
        </span><strong>BLUE</strong></li>
  <li><span>
          Vehicle type approval
        </span><strong>
              Not available
            </strong></li>
</ul>

and the code I have so far

$dom = new DOMDocument();
//as @Larry.Z comments, you forgot to load the $html
$dom->loadHTML($html);

$xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);

//assuming there can be more than one "result set" on each page
$results = array();

$result_divs = $xpath->query('//ul[@class="ul-data"]');
foreach ($result_divs as $result_div) {
    $result=array();
    foreach ($result_div->childNodes as $result_item) {
        $content=trim($result_item->textContent);
        if ($content!='') $result[]=$content;
    } 
    $results[]=$result;
}

echo '<pre>';
print_r($results);
echo '</pre>';

which prints out

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => Vehicle make
        CITROEN
            [1] => Date of first registration
            27 August 1997
            [2] => Year of manufacture
          1997
            [3] => Cylinder capacity (cc)
        1124cc
            [4] => Fuel type
        PETROL
            [5] => Vehicle colour
        BLUE
            [6] => Vehicle type approval

              Not available
        )

)

How can I get it to set an associative array like

[Vehicle make] => CITREON

The issue is that I need to get li> span as the key and then the data in between the <strong> as the value.

If you are parsing remote site I can recommend you Simplehtmldom library. Its working like a charm. — Svetoslav
– Svetoslav, Commented Nov 26, 2015 at 15:55
Can you not run another xpath query on each childNode to extract the content of the <span> tag and the <strong> tag separately? — Adam Taylor
– Adam Taylor, Commented Nov 26, 2015 at 16:07

Steve · Accepted Answer · 2015-11-26 16:16:23Z

2

As your html has only a single ul, there is no need for the outer loop. You can just grab all li tags, and access the 1st and second child elements:

$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadHTML($html);

$results = array();

foreach ($dom->getElementsByTagName('li') as $li) {        
    $results[$li->childNodes->item(0)->textContent]=$li->childNodes->item(1)->textContent;
}

print_r($results);

answered Nov 26, 2015 at 16:16

Steve

20.5k5 gold badges47 silver badges71 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

How to extract HTML and put in php associative array?

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related