[SOLVED] Insert a comment in html file based on its contents [Archive]

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diaco

June 10th, 2010, 01:14 PM

I have multiple HTML files in a folder. there is a <h2> tag like this:

<h2>some text</h2>in each file.
I want to write a shell script/batch file to add this tag in <head> section of each file:

there is a problem: <h2>some text</h2> in some files has 1 or more linebreaks and so I can't capture tag content using a simple grep or...
for example:
<h2>first part of text
second line of text</h2>

The line break shouldn't be shown in .
The script has to capture tag content & skip line breaks.
Can anybody help me?

DanielWaterworth

June 10th, 2010, 01:30 PM

You can do it in python:

import re, sys

if len(sys.argv) != 2:
print "usage: %s [filename]" % sys.argv[0]
sys.exit(1)

filename = sys.argv[1]

f = open(filename, "r")
contents = f.read()
f.close()

m = re.search(r"<h2>([^<>]+)</h2>", contents)
if m:
h2 = m.group(1)
h2 = re.sub('\n', '', h2)
contents = re.sub('<head>', '<head>\n', contents)
f = open(filename, "w")
f.write(contents)
f.close()
It's not tested but it shouldn't need much done to it. If you need any help just post back here with your problems. Obviously backup everything before you use it on indispensable files.

diaco

June 10th, 2010, 03:38 PM

DanielWaterworth

June 10th, 2010, 04:02 PM

It works for me, this is what I did:

I saved the code above as change.py and made a simple test file, (called file, it didn't contain much just a h2 tag with some text and an empty head below it). In the shell I then typed "python change.py file" and it made the change and saved it.

I prefer python to shell scripting because shell scripting gets very complicated very quickly. Python was originally designed to do work like this anyhow.

DanielWaterworth

June 10th, 2010, 05:55 PM

I don't think it's making a change because it's case sensitive. Are there instances of anything but <h2>, like <H2> or instead of <head>, <HEAD> or even something like <head something=something>?

myrtle1908

June 11th, 2010, 07:01 AM

Best to use a HTML parser for this task. However, this nasty Perl script should do what you require

use strict;
use warnings;

my $htmlfile = $ARGV[0] || 'h2.html';
my ($buf, $h2, $t, $c);

undef $/;
open IN, $htmlfile or die $!;
$buf = <IN>;
close IN;

if ($buf =~ m!<h2>(.*?)</h2>!gsi) {
$t = $1;
$t =~ s#\n# #g;
$c = qq();
$buf =~ s#<head(.*?)>#<head$1>$c#si;
open OUT, ">$htmlfile" or die $!;
print OUT $buf;
close OUT;
print "Updated $htmlfile\n";
} else {
print "H2 not found in $htmlfile\n";
}

h2.html before

<hEaD some="thing"
another="attrib">
</head>

<h2>Some
heading
and stuff
</h2>

h2.html after

<head some="thing"
another="attrib">
</head>

<h2>Some
heading
and stuff
</h2>

Milliways

June 11th, 2010, 08:36 AM

Thank you but it didn't make any change to my html files (and i don't know how to correct python codes!).
Is there any other way? (I rather shell scripting because i can change & correct it & I undrestand the code)
Sorry but sometimes I really miss the power of visual studio.net :(

There are many ways.
I probably would have used sed with a regular expression to make the changes.

I am not sure if this would be easier, but after you debugged it you could include the sed command as 1 or 2 lines in the script.

Unfortunately the documentation for sed 'info sed' is a little intimidating.

diaco

June 12th, 2010, 08:22 AM

Best to use a HTML parser for this task.

Is there any suitable HTML parser in linux? I couldn't find a anything more than sed.

diaco

June 14th, 2010, 11:11 AM

Thank you! The problem is solved. This is the simplest solution (for me):
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/programming-9/insert-a-comment-in-html-file-based-on-its-contents-813325/#post3999066