HTML table section parsing

HTML is just a subset of XML, so the XML transformers will work.

Hi @gleberre2012, although it's true that HTML is a subset of XML, there may be some exceptional syntax in HTML, so there could be cases where an entire HTML document cannot be processed with XML transformers. However, fortunately, the <table> section usually conforms to the XML syntax, so I would try extracting the <table> section at first.

1. Text File reader: Read each line from the HTML document.
2. Aggregator: Concatenate all the lines to form a single string (do not contain new line characters).
3. 
   StringSearcher: Extract the <table> section using this regular expression.

<table.*?>.+?</table>

Hi @gleberre2012,

I can't find the <Table> tag in your HTML file when I open the page source, it is just text.

Thank you for your answers.

First of all, the previous attached file was the result of a HTMLtoXHTMLConverter transformer. It is true that it is not a real HTML file. The URL I have to decode is the following : http://www.alertepollens.org/gardens/garden/1/state/ (its source code in fact)

Then, I must admit that I do not clearly understand your explanations : in my 2014 version of FME, there is no TextFileReader transformer. Only a TextDecoder one. Is it the one you were thinking about ?

While trying it, this latter allows me to put the whole content of the above URL in an attribute, with all new line characters, not in a single line as @takashi advised me. Then, I do not succeed in configuring an Aggregator to eliminate all new lines and concatenate all the lines.

I fear I do not have the background to understand your explanations ... but if someone has enough time to explain it, I am interested. In all cases, I need to decode this stream and I will continue to look for a solution to fix this trouble.

Gerard

The Text File Reader is not a transformer name. A regular reader to read plain text file. This screenshot illustrates my intention.

If you set "Yes" to the "Read Whole at Once" parameter of the Text File Reader, the Aggregator can be removed.

In addition, the HTTPFetcher could also be used instead of the Text File Reader, to fetch the HTML document from the URL directly.

Hello,

Once again, I really thank you for your answers and your help.

@gisinnovationsb : exactly, the elements I want to extract are those pieces of information.

@takashi : I have followed your instructions and I have finally succeeded in decoding relevant elements of <table> structure. It is more or less something that sequentially use following transformers :

- HTTPFetcher to connect to my source and recover the stream

- AttributeSplitter to get the interesting part of the stream

- XMLFragmenter to parse <table> section

- and finally StringSearcher to extract all relevant data

I am sure my script is not very efficient but, as a first version, the job is done. So it is ok for now.

Gerard