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javahtmlurlconnection

How do i get specifics from html?


I have some java code that will print out html from a website of my choosing. I would like it to only print out specific dates in HTML code that looks like this:

<tr class="bgWhite">
  <td align="center" width="50"><nobr>GD&#160;</nobr></td>
  <td align="center">Q3&#160;2012</td>

  <td align="left" width="*">Q3 2012 General Dynamics Earnings Release</td>
  <td align="center">$ 1.83&#160;</td>
  <td align="center">n/a&#160;</td>
  <td align="center">$ 1.83&#160;</td>
  <td align="center"><nobr>24-Oct-12</nobr></td>
</tr>
<tr class="bgWhite">
  <td align="center" width="50"><nobr>GD&#160;</nobr></td>
  <td align="center">Q2&#160;2012</td>

  <td align="left" width="*">Q2 2012 General Dynamics Earnings Release</td>
  <td align="center">$ 1.75&#160;</td>
  <td align="center">n/a&#160;</td>
  <td align="center">$ 1.79&#160;</td>
  <td align="center"><nobr>25-Jul-12 BMO</nobr></td>
</tr>

So I only want it to print out: 24-Oct-12 25-Jul-12

How do I do that?

Here is the code that I have:

String nextLine;
URL url = null;
URLConnection urlConn = null;
InputStreamReader  inStream = null;
BufferedReader buff = null;

try{
    // Create the URL obect that points
    // at the default file index.html
    url  = new URL("http://www.earnings.com/company.asp?client=cb&ticker=gd");
    urlConn = url.openConnection();
    inStream = new InputStreamReader( 
                       urlConn.getInputStream());
    buff= new BufferedReader(inStream);

    // Read and print the lines from index.html
    while (true){
        nextLine =buff.readLine();  
        if (nextLine !=null){
            System.out.println(nextLine); 
        }
        else{
           break;
        } 
    }
 } catch(MalformedURLException e){
   System.out.println("Please check the URL:" + 
                                       e.toString() );
 } catch(IOException  e1){
  System.out.println("Can't read  from the Internet: "+ 
                                      e1.toString() ); 
}

Solution

  • It's easier to use a fullworthy HTML parser for the job than low level java.net.URLConnection. However, since the targeted website generates absolutely non-semantic HTML (one and all tables without any semantic identifiers/classes, like as how the average 90's website looked (yuck)), it's even for a decent HTML parser tricky to parse it properly. But anyway, here's a complete kickoff example using Jsoup which prints exactly the information you need:

    Document document = Jsoup.connect("http://www.earnings.com/company.asp?client=cb&ticker=gd").get();
    Elements dateColumn = document.select("table:eq(0) tr:eq(0) table:eq(7) tr:eq(2) table:eq(4) td:eq(6):not(.dataHdrText02)");
    
    for (Element dateCell : dateColumn) {
        System.out.println(dateCell.text());
    }
    

    That's all. No need to hassle with low level java.net.URLConnection or a verbose SAX parser.

    See also: