HTML::PullParser

HTML::PullParser(3)   User Contributed Perl Documentation  HTML::PullParser(3)



NAME
       HTML::PullParser - Alternative HTML::Parser interface

SYNOPSIS
        use HTML::PullParser;

        $p = HTML::PullParser->new(file => "index.html",
                                   start => 'event, tagname, @attr',
                                   end   => 'event, tagname',
                                   ignore_elements => [qw(script style)],
                                  ) || die "Can't open: $!";
        while (my $token = $p->get_token) {
            #...do something with $token
        }

DESCRIPTION
       The HTML::PullParser is an alternative interface to the HTML::Parser
       class.  It basically turns the HTML::Parser inside out.  You associate
       a file (or any IO::Handle object or string) with the parser at con-
       struction time and then repeatedly call $parser->get_token to obtain
       the tags and text found in the parsed document.

       The following methods are provided:

       $p = HTML::PullParser->new( file => $file, %options )
       $p = HTML::PullParser->new( doc => \$doc, %options )
           A "HTML::PullParser" can be made to parse from either a file or a
           literal document based on whether the "file" or "doc" option is
           passed to the parser's constructor.

           The "file" passed in can either be a file name or a file handle
           object.  If a file name is passed, and it can't be opened for read-
           ing, then the constructor will return an undefined value and $!
           will tell you why it failed.  Otherwise the argument is taken to be
           some object that the "HTML::PullParser" can read() from when it
           needs more data.  The stream will be read() until EOF, but not
           closed.

           A "doc" can be passed plain or as a reference to a scalar.  If a
           reference is passed then the value of this scalar should not be
           changed before all tokens have been extracted.

           Next the information to be returned for the different token types
           must be set up.  This is done by simply associating an argspec (as
           defined in HTML::Parser) with the events you have an interest in.
           For instance, if you want "start" tokens to be reported as the
           string 'S' followed by the tagname and the attributes you might
           pass an "start"-option like this:

              $p = HTML::PullParser->new(
                     doc   => $document_to_parse,
                     start => '"S", tagname, @attr',
                     end   => '"E", tagname',
                   );

           At last other "HTML::Parser" options, like "ignore_tags", and
           "unbroken_text", can be passed in.  Note that you should not use
           the event_h options to set up parser handlers.  That would confuse
           the inner logic of "HTML::PullParser".

       $token = $p->get_token
           This method will return the next token found in the HTML document,
           or "undef" at the end of the document.  The token is returned as an
           array reference.  The content of this array match the argspec set
           up during "HTML::PullParser" construction.

       $p->unget_token( @tokens )
           If you find out you have read too many tokens you can push them
           back, so that they are returned again the next time $p->get_token
           is called.

EXAMPLES
       The 'eg/hform' script shows how we might parse the form section of
       HTML::Documents using HTML::PullParser.

SEE ALSO
       HTML::Parser, HTML::TokeParser

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright 1998-2001 Gisle Aas.

       This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
       under the same terms as Perl itself.



perl v5.8.6                       2006-04-26               HTML::PullParser(3)