Extracting data from HTML using PHP and xPath

Question

I am trying to extract data from a webpage to insert it to a database. The data I\'m interested in is in the div\'s which have a class=\"company\". On one webpage there are

Answer 1

To check if a node exists, verify that the length property is equal to 1 in the returned query result:

if ($company_name->length == 1) {
   $object->company_name = trim($company_name->item(0)->nodeValue);
}

Answer 2

Each Company can be represented by a context-node while having each property represented by an xpath-expression relative to it:

Company company-6666:
 ->id ....... = "company-6666"    --    string(@id)
 ->name ..... = "Company Name"    --    .//a[1]/text()
 ->href ..... = "/company-name"    --    .//a[1]/@href
 ->img ...... = "/graphics/company/logo/listing/123456.jpg?_ts=1365390237"    --    .//img[1]/@src
 ->address .. = "StreetName 500, 7777 City, County"    --    .//*[@class="address"]/text()
 ...

If you wrap that into objects, this is pretty nifty to use:

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

/* @var $companies DOMValueObject[] */
$companies = new Companies($doc);

foreach ($companies as $company) {
    printf("Company %s:\n", $company->id);
    foreach ($company->getObjectProperties() as $name => $value) {
        $expression = $company->getPropertyExpression($name);
        printf(" ->%'.-10s = \"%s\"    --    %s\n", $name.' ', $value, $expression);
    }
}

This works with DOMObjectCollection and DOMValueObject, defining your own type:

class Companies extends DOMValueCollection
{
    public function __construct(DOMDocument $doc) {
        parent::__construct($doc, '//*[@class="company"]');
    }

    /**
     * @return DOMValueObject
     */
    public function current() {
        $object = parent::current();
        $object->defineProperty('id', 'string(@id)');
        $object->defineProperty('name', './/a[1]/text()');
        $object->defineProperty('href', './/a[1]/@href');
        $object->defineProperty('img', './/img[1]/@src');
        $object->defineProperty('address', './/*[@class="address"]/text()');
        # ... add your definitions
        return $object;
    }
}

And for your array requirements there is a getArrayCopy() method:

echo "\nGet Array Copy:\n\n";

print_r($companies->getArrayCopy());

Output:

Get Array Copy:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [id] => company-6666
            [name] => Company Name
            [href] => /company-name
            [img] => /graphics/company/logo/listing/123456.jpg?_ts=1365390237
            [address] => StreetName 500, 7777 City, County
        )

)