From: Drew Raines <aaraines@...>
Date: 2007-04-19T01:15:04+09:00
Subject: Re: Hpricot getting a table

lrlebron@gmail.com wrote:

> At this point data contains html that looks like this
>
> <table><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr></table>
> <table><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr></table>
> <table><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr></table>
> <table><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr></table>
>
> More stuff continues ......
>
> I want capture each of these four tables individually for further
> processing. I have tried a variety of methods but nothing seems to
> work.

Would something as simple as this work?  I'm not sure how complex
your tables get.

   #!/usr/bin/env ruby

   require "hpricot"

   doc = Hpricot("<table><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr></table>
   <table><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr></table>
   <table><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr></table>
   <table><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr></table>")

   (doc/"table").map {|t| puts t.to_html}

This outputs:

   "<table><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr></table>"
   "<table><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr></table>"
   "<table><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr></table>"
   "<table><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr><tr><td>Stuff</td></tr></table>"

Note that there's an Hpricot mailing list at
http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/hpricot/ that might be a more
appropriate forum for these questions.

-Drew