HTML::TableExtract with a table inside of a table

Question

I have a small script that I am using to manipulate the code from a remote URL (code is separate). The manual page for HTML::TableExtract has the following code section relating to doing a table-in-a-table extract, ie

$te = new HTML::TableExtract
      (
       headers => [qw(Summary Region)],
       chain   => [
                   { depth => 0, count => 2 },
                   { headers => [qw(Part Qty Cost)] }
                  ],
      );

My code contains this, ie:

use HTML::TableExtract;
use strict;
use warnings;

my $te = new HTML::TableExtract
      (
       headers => [qw(Incident Date Time Location Description)],
       chain   => [
                   { depth => 0, count => 2 },
                   { headers => [qw(Unit DIS ENR ONS LEF ARR BUS REM COM)] }
                  ],
      );

$te->parse_file('data.html');

However, running it gives me this:

Can't locate object method "chain" via package "HTML::TableExtract" at /usr/lib/perl5/HTML/Parser.pm line 80.

Is there something I'm missing? (If anyone has a better way to extract a table from within a table (while printing information from both I'm all ears)

score 1 · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-31T04:28:04.317

1

I didn't see any document about chain method in the doc of HTML::TableExtract. Maybe you're using an expired version?

But according to the doc, you could do this using the depth and count attributes:

$te = HTML::TableExtract->new( 
                              headers => [qw(Unit DIS ENR ONS LEF ARR BUS REM COM)], 
                              depth => 1, 
                              count => 1 
                             );
$te->parse($html_string);

depth: Specify how embedded in other tables your tables of interest should be. Top-level tables in the HTML document have a depth of 0, tables within top-level tables have a depth of 1, and so on.

count: Specify which table within each depth you are interested in, beginning with 0.

In your case depth and count should be both 1.

edited Jul 31 '13 at 04:28

answered Jul 31 '13 at 04:13

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/dapper/man3/HTML::TableExtract.3pm.html was the one I was referring to, it's OLD and outdated (and it's the first one that shows up on a google search for 'chain' ) – No Way Jul 31 '13 at 04:34
@NoWay So which version of this module did you install, the outdated one or the one on CPAN? It it's the latter you could follow the new doc, using `depth` and `count` attributes to find your nested table of interest. – Jul 31 '13 at 04:42
I installed the latest one from CPAN via 'cpan install HTML::TableExtract' which is 2.xx or so. Sorry for the confusion, didn't realize chain was changed to depth. – No Way Jul 31 '13 at 04:52

HTML::TableExtract with a table inside of a table

1 Answers1