How to extract text from specific rows in nested tables with Jsoup

Question

I'm using Jsoup to extract text from a website, and I can't figure out how to properly get specific rows of data in nested tables. I need to get the plain text after the parts that say Property Address: and Mailing Address: , so I can store the data.

Here is the HTML source I am parsing:

<table width="730" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2">
  <tr> 
    <td><table width="730" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2">
      <tr> 
        <td><h1>Property Information</h1>
          <table width="758">
            <tr>[IRRELEVANT]</tr>
            <tr>[IRRELEVANT]</tr>
            <tr>
              <td colspan="3"><strong>Property Address:</strong>&nbsp;!!THIS PLAIN TEXT HERE IS WHAT I NEED!! DATA1</td>
              <td>&nbsp;</td>
              </tr>
            <tr>
              <td colspan="3"><strong>Mailing Address:</strong>!!NEED THIS TOO!! DATA2</td>
              <td>&nbsp;</td>
              </tr>
            <tr>[IRRELEVANT]</tr>...................

I was using this as a template, but it doesn't work, and I have no idea how to make it work.

Document documentSerialNumberPageData = Jsoup.connect(stringURLOfSerialNumberPage).get();   //connect to serial number page
Elements elementsSerialNumberPageData = documentSerialNumberPageData.select("#tabletext tbody > tr > td > tbody > tr > td > tbody > tr > td");  //this is not even remotely correct... :(
Element elementAddress = elementsSerialNumberPageData.get(0);
System.out.println(elementAddress.text());

My knowledge of HTML/CSS is very limited, but I'm proficient in Java. Any suggestions? Thanks! Full Source Here: https://github.com/PhotonPhighter/NODScraper/blob/master/src/nodscraper/Main.java

Answer 1

You can try this:

Elements innerTable = documentSerialNumberPageData.select("body > table:nth-child(2) > tbody > tr > td > table > tbody > tr > td > table:nth-child(2)");
String propertyAddress = ((org.jsoup.nodes.TextNode)innerTable.select("tr:nth-child(3) > td > strong").first().nextSibling()).text();
String mailingAddress = ((org.jsoup.nodes.TextNode)innerTable.select("tr:nth-child(4) > td > strong").first().nextSibling()).text();

First, you select the table , then you select the strong tag in the first td in the third tr , then you pick the next sibling to that, you take the text() in it and you are done. We do the same for the forth tr .

With text() JSoup will translate the   into spaces, if you prefer not, you can also call toString() .

Hope that it helps.

PS: Can I suggest a trick? You can use developer tools of Chrome or Firefox to find a tag in a html page, then right click and Copy CSS Path . This will give you the selector you can use in JSoup!