Transaction Data in HTML file

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v k
v k on 15 May 2020
Commented: v k on 16 May 2020
Hello, I have a whole bunch of html files in a directory, named transactionData1.html, transactionData2.html and so on. In these HTML files, transaction information is buried with the following parameters of interest :
<b>Customer Name: </b>Michael Henesi<br />
... (some other stuff)
<b>Transaction ID:</b> 21987335670
The transaction ID has varying length and is sometimes not available (no entry in that field). Sometimes there are multiple transactions. Sometimes, the transaction ID is specified as:
<b>Transaction ID: </b>21987335670
that is, the space before transaction ID gets shifted to space after the colon.
In some HTML files, both, the Customer Name and the Transaction ID information is missing.
The objective is to get all the Transaction IDs, along with the Customer Names, from all the files in the directory, in one text file. How can this be done ?
  2 Comments
per isakson
per isakson on 15 May 2020
You increase your chance to get a useful answer if you upload a few html-files that represent the cases.
  • In some HTML files, both, the Customer Name and the Transaction ID information is missing.
  • The transaction ID has varying length and is sometimes not available
  • Sometimes there are multiple transactions.
  • etc.
v k
v k on 15 May 2020
Sure. I have attached one such file (in text format).
In the transaction ID field, sometimes it is just blank.

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Accepted Answer

per isakson
per isakson on 15 May 2020
Edited: per isakson on 15 May 2020
This is a start
%%
sad = dir( 'd:\m\cssm\transData*.txt' );
len = length( sad );
out = cell( len, 2 );
for jj = 1 : len
chr = fileread( fullfile( sad(jj).folder, sad(jj).name ) );
xpr = '<b>Customer Name: <\/b>([^<]+).+<b>Transaction ID:<\/b>\x20*(\d+)';
cac = regexp( chr, xpr, 'tokens' );
if not( isempty( cac{1} ) )
out(jj,:) = cac{:};
end
end
out
It outputs
out =
1×2 cell array
{'Wee Lu'} {'8299045'}
>>
In response to comment
%%
sad = dir( 'd:\m\cssm\transData*.txt' );
len = length( sad );
out = cell( len, 2 );
for jj = 1 : len
chr = fileread( fullfile( sad(jj).folder, sad(jj).name ) );
xpr = '<b>Customer Name: <\/b>([^<]*).*<b>Transaction ID:<\/b>\x20*(\d*)';
cac = regexp( chr, xpr, 'tokens' );
if not(isempty( cac{1}{1} )) && not(isempty( cac{1}{2} ))
out(jj,:) = cac{1};
elseif not(isempty( cac{1}{1} ))
out(jj,1) = cac{1}(1);
out(jj,2) = {'-99'};
elseif not(isempty( cac{1}{2} ))
out(jj,1) = {'---'};
out(jj,2) = cac{1}(2);
else
out(jj,1) = {'---'};
out(jj,2) = {'-99'};
end
end
out
outputs
out =
2×2 cell array
{'Wee Lu' } {'8299045'}
{'Lam Soon'} {'-99' }
>>
  6 Comments
per isakson
per isakson on 16 May 2020
Edited: per isakson on 16 May 2020
Regular expressions are not trivial. They require concentration, care with the details and reading the documentation carefully. See regexp, Match regular expression (case sensitive). There is a lot on regular expressions on the Internet, e.g. RegEx101. There are many flavors of regular expressions and Matlab has its own, which however is fairly close to PCRE.
Answers
  • \x20 stands for space; character with hexadecimal value 20.
  • * zero or more times of previous "item"
  • () capture tokens; keeps what's in the parentheses for the output
  • [^<] anything except for <
The Matlab documentation explains this much better than I do!
v k
v k on 16 May 2020
Much appreciation.

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