Import a table from a web site

Hi everyone! I am trying to import a table from a web site http://www.sardegnacedoc.it/idrografico/elaborazioni/426400/33147/20207/ I am trying to use webread but I can't import just the table that I need. Is there a way to import the table, maybe using the Xpath?

Answer 1

[Rahul]

Hi @Serena Sirigu,

I understand that you wish to find the table element from the given web site. Consider the following approach:

• 'webread' alone won't be able to process the html content on the page and you would require function 'htmltree' to parse the html.
• Now using the 'findElement' obtain the table component.
• Is your require to obtain each data from the table, consider using 'findElement' on 'tr', 'td' tags of the table.

Here is an example:

url = 'http://www.sardegnacedoc.it/idrografico/elaborazioni/426400/33147/20207/';
htmlContent = webread(url);

tree = htmlTree(htmlContent);

% Find all tables
tables = findElement(tree, "table");
targetTable = tables(1);  % % Pick the one you need (Change index if needed)
rows = findElement(targetTable, "tr");
data = [];

for i = 1:length(rows)
    tdCells = findElement(rows(i), "td");
    thCells = findElement(rows(i), "th");
    cells = [tdCells; thCells];

    % Sort to preserve order if needed (optional)

    % Extract text
    rowData = strings(1, numel(cells));
    for j = 1:numel(cells)
        rowData(j) = extractHTMLText(cells(j));
    end
    data = [data; rowData]; % Append the row
end

disp(data)

This approach works in your case.

I tried doing the same using 'xpath' parsers and was getting errors like: "The element type "meta" must be terminated by the matching end-tag "</meta>"." This is possibly as the html being obtained is not a well-formed XML.

The following MathWorks documentations can be referred:

'webread': https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/webread.html

'htmltree': https://www.mathworks.com/help/textanalytics/ref/htmltree.html

'findElement': https://www.mathworks.com/help/textanalytics/ref/htmltree.findelement.html

'extractHTMLText': https://www.mathworks.com/help/textanalytics/ref/htmltree.extracthtmltext.html

'matlab.io.xml.dom.Parser Class': https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/matlab.io.xml.dom.parser-class.html

Thanks.