PHP Simple DOMDocument scraping exclude td class

Question

Im simply trying to get all the <td> elements data residing inside <tr> elements. My problem is because of the table structure im trying to scrape I need to exclude all elements with attribute COLLSPAN i.e <td collspan = 12> Getting the table data is simple enough as can be seen from below code but because of the table structure I need to exclude all collspan attributes.

<?php

$html = file_get_contents('http://www.superxv.com/fixtures/'); //get the html returned from the following url

$game_doc = new DOMDocument();
libxml_use_internal_errors(TRUE); //disable libxml errors
if(!empty($html)) { //if any html is actually returned
    $game_doc->loadHTML($html);
    libxml_clear_errors(); //remove error
    $xpath = new DOMXPath($game_doc);

    // Modify the XPath query to match the content
    foreach ($xpath->query('//table')->item(0)->getElementsByTagName('tr') as $rows) {
        $cells = $rows->getElementsByTagName('td');
        //$cells2 = $rows->getElementsByTagName('th');
        echo '<pre>';
         //@ signs are added due to table structure
        //Get scrapped columns
        echo $dayDateBye[] = $cells->item(0)->textContent;
        echo $homeTeam[] = $cells->item(1)->textContent;
        echo $awayTeam[] = $cells->item(2)->textContent;
        echo $venue[] = $cells->item(3)->textContent;
        echo $timeGMT[] = $cells->item(5)->textContent;
        echo $timeZA[] = $cells->item(10)->textContent;
        echo '</pre>';
    }
}

Here you can see the table structure it shows 5 odd rows of fixtures and then changes structure when the new week starts. The elements I can identify to skip over this change of structure is all <td collspan = 12> elements. Which makes it tricky since the TD elements does not have a class name only the element to identify it with.

Any input appreciated.

Answer 1

You can skip those by length of the tag

<?php

$html = file_get_contents('http://www.superxv.com/fixtures/'); //get the html returned from the following url

$game_doc = new DOMDocument();
libxml_use_internal_errors(TRUE); //disable libxml errors
if(!empty($html)) { //if any html is actually returned
    $game_doc->loadHTML($html);
    libxml_clear_errors(); //remove error
    $xpath = new DOMXPath($game_doc);

    // Modify the XPath query to match the content
    foreach ($xpath->query('//table')->item(0)->getElementsByTagName('tr') as $rows) {
        $cells = $rows->getElementsByTagName('td');
        if( $cells->length > 1 ){
            //$cells2 = $rows->getElementsByTagName('th');
            echo '<pre>';
             //@ signs are added due to table structure
            //Get scrapped columns
            echo $dayDateBye[] = $cells->item(0)->textContent;
            echo $homeTeam[] = $cells->item(1)->textContent;
            echo $awayTeam[] = $cells->item(2)->textContent;
            echo $venue[] = $cells->item(3)->textContent;
            echo $timeGMT[] = $cells->item(5)->textContent;
            echo $timeZA[] = $cells->item(10)->textContent;
            echo '</pre>';
        }
    }
}

?>

Answer 2

use xpath to exclude elements with colspan attributes

So instead of:

$cells = $rows->getElementsByTagName('td');

Use:

$cells = $xpath->query('td[not(@colspan)]', $rows);