Using XmlSlurper: How to select sub-elements while iterating over a GPathResult
I am writing an HTML parser, which uses TagSoup to pass a well-formed structure to XMLSlurper.
Here's the generalised code:
def htmlText = """
<html>
<body>
<div id="divId" class="divclass">
<h2>Heading 2</h2>
<ol>
<li><h3><a class="box" href="#href1">href1 link text</a> <span>extra stuff</span></h3><address>Here is the address<span>Telephone number: <strong>telephone</strong></span></address></li>
<li><h3><a class="box" href="#href2">href2 link text</a> <span>extra stuff</span></h3><address>Here is another address<span>Another telephone: <strong>0845 1111111</strong></span></address></li>
</ol>
</div>
</body>
</html>
"""
def html = new XmlSlurper(new org.ccil.cowan.tagsoup.Parser()).parseText( htmlText );
html.'**'.grep { it.@class == 'divclass' }.ol.li.each { linkItem ->
def link = linkItem.h3.a.@href
def address = linkItem.address.text()
println "$link: $address\n"
}
I would expect the each to let me select each 'li' in turn so I can retrieve the corresponding href and address details. Instead, I am getting this output:
#href1#href2: Here is the addressTelephone number: telephoneHere is another addressAnother telephone: 0845 1111111
I've checked various example on the web and these either deal with XML, or are one-liner examples like "retrieve all links from this file". It's seems that the it.h3.a.@href expression is collecting all hrefs in the text, even though I'm passing it a reference to the parent 'li' node.
Can you let me know:
- Why I'm getting the output shown
- How I can retrieve the href/address pairs for each 'li' item
Thanks.
Answer
Replace grep with find:
html.'**'.find { it.@class == 'divclass' }.ol.li.each { linkItem ->
def link = linkItem.h3.a.@href
def address = linkItem.address.text()
println "$link: $address\n"
}
then you'll get
#href1: Here is the addressTelephone number: telephone
#href2: Here is another addressAnother telephone: 0845 1111111
grep returns an ArrayList but find returns a NodeChild class:
println html.'**'.grep { it.@class == 'divclass' }.getClass()
println html.'**'.find { it.@class == 'divclass' }.getClass()
results in:
class java.util.ArrayList
class groovy.util.slurpersupport.NodeChild
thus if you wanted to use grep you could then nest another each like this for it to work
html.'**'.grep { it.@class == 'divclass' }.ol.li.each {
it.each { linkItem ->
def link = linkItem.h3.a.@href
def address = linkItem.address.text()
println "$link: $address\n"
}
}
Long story short, in your case, use find rather than grep.