I am having a lot of trouble learning RegExp and coming up with a good algorithm to do this. I have this string of HTML that I need to parse. Note that when I am parsing it, it is still a string object and not yet HTML on the browser as I need to parse it before it gets there. The HTML looks like this:
<html>
<head>
<title>Geoserver GetFeatureInfo output</title>
</head>
<style type=text/css>
table.featureInfo, table.featureInfo td, table.featureInfo th {
border:1px solid #ddd;
border-collapse:collapse;
margin:0;
padding:0;
font-size: 90%;
padding:.2em .1em;
}
table.featureInfo th {
padding:.2em .2em;
font-weight:bold;
background:#eee;
}
table.featureInfo td{
background:#fff;
}
table.featureInfo tr.odd td{
background:#eee;
}
table.featureInfo caption{
text-align:left;
font-size:100%;
font-weight:bold;
text-transform:uppercase;
padding:.2em .2em;
}
</style>
<body>
<table class=featureInfo2>
<tr>
<th class=dataLayer colspan=5>Tibetan Villages</th>
</tr>
<!-- EOF Data Layer -->
<tr class=dataHeaders>
<th>ID</th>
<th>Latitude</th>
<th>Longitude</th>
<th>Place Name</th>
<th>English Translation</th>
</tr>
<!-- EOF Data Headers -->
<!-- Data -->
<tr>
<!-- Feature Info Data -->
<td>3394</td>
<td>29.1</td>
<td>93.15</td>
<td>བསྡམས་གྲོང་ཚོ།</td>
<td>Dam Drongtso </td>
</tr>
<!-- EOF Feature Info Data -->
<!-- End Data -->
</table>
<br/>
</body>
</html>
and I need to get it like this:
3394,
29.1,
93.15,
བསྡམས་གྲོང་ཚོ།,
Dam Drongtso
Basically an array...even better if it matches according to its field headers and from which table they are somehow, which look like this:
Tibetan Villages
ID
Latitude
Longitude
Place Name
English Translation
Finding out JavaScript does not support wonderful mapping was a bummer and I have what I want working already. However it is VERY VERY hard coded and I'm thinking I should probably use RegExp to handle this better. Unfortunately I am having a real tough time :(. Here is my function to parse my string (very ugly IMO):
function parseHTML(html){
//Getting the layer name
alert(html);
//Lousy attempt at RegExp
var somestring = html.replace('/m//<html>+<body>//m/',' ');
alert(somestring);
var startPos = html.indexOf('<th class=dataLayer colspan=5>');
var length = ('<th class=dataLayer colspan=5>').length;
var endPos = html.indexOf('</th></tr><!-- EOF Data Layer -->');
var dataLayer = html.substring(startPos + length, endPos);
//Getting the data headers
startPos = html.indexOf('<tr class=dataHeaders>');
length = ('<tr class=dataHeaders>').length;
endPos = html.indexOf('</tr><!-- EOF Data Headers -->');
var newString = html.substring(startPos + length, endPos);
newString = newString.replace(/<th>/g, '');
newString = newString.substring(0, newString.lastIndexOf('</th>'));
var featureInfoHeaders = new Array();
featureInfoHeaders = newString.split('</th>');
//Getting the data
startPos = html.indexOf('<!-- Data -->');
length = ('<!-- Data -->').length;
endPos = html.indexOf('<!-- End Data -->');
newString = html.substring(startPos + length, endPos);
newString = newString.substring(0, newString.lastIndexOf('</tr><!-- EOF Feature Info Data -->'));
var featureInfoData = new Array();
featureInfoData = newString.split('</tr><!-- EOF Feature Info Data -->');
for(var s = 0; s < featureInfoData.length; s++){
startPos = featureInfoData[s].indexOf('<!-- Feature Info Data -->');
length = ('<!-- Feature Info Data -->').length;
endPos = featureInfoData[s].lastIndexOf('</td>');
featureInfoData[s] = featureInfoData[s].substring(startPos + length, endPos);
featureInfoData[s] = featureInfoData[s].replace(/<td>/g, '');
featureInfoData[s] = featureInfoData[s].split('</td>');
}//end for
alert(featureInfoData);
//Put all the feature info in one array
var featureInfo = new Array();
var len = featureInfoData.length;
for(var j = 0; j < len; j++){
featureInfo[j] = new Object();
featureInfo[j].id = featureInfoData[j][0];
featureInfo[j].latitude = featureInfoData[j][1];
featureInfo[j].longitude = featureInfoData[j][2];
featureInfo[j].placeName = featureInfoData[j][3];
featureInfo[j].translation = featureInfoData[j][4];
}//end for
//This can be ignored for now...
var string = redesignHTML(featureInfoHeaders, featureInfo);
return string;
}//end parseHTML
So as you can see if the content in that string ever changes, my code will be horribly broken. I want to avoid that as much as possible and try to write better code. I appreciate all the help and advice you can give me.
