Simple Dom HTML tags without attributes

Question

Hello I am trying to pull back roster information from ESPN.com. Each team's roster is saved into a table. I am trying to figure a way to save each tag into a variable as appropriate however each tag does not have an ID such as "jersey_number"/"player_name" so search through this has given me some problems. Here is what I have so far - If you could give me a pointer or 2 that would be much appreciated.

    <?php
    require_once("../tools/simple_html_dom.php");
    require_once("../tools/Utilities.php");
    $url = "http://espn.go.com/nfl/team/roster/_/name/den/denver-broncos";

    $espnHTML = file_get_html("http://espn.go.com/nfl/team/roster/_/name/den/denver-broncos");



    foreach($espnHTML->find("table.tablehead",0)->find('tr[class^=odd]') as $rosterRow)
    {
        foreach($rosterRow->find("td") as $playerInfo)
        {
            echo $playerInfo->plaintext."<br>";   
        }

    }
   ?>

How can I assign these td tags into appropriate variables without "ids"? Attached is a sample screenshot that may help you understand what I am talking about.

Answer 1

If the columns are in the same order for every player, using your $rosterrow->find("td") should return an indexed array that you can access using $playerrow[0..n] . Then, by analyzing what corresponds to what you can make a function like this:

$players = array();
foreach($espnHTML->find("table.tablehead",0)->find('tr[class^=odd]') as $rosterRow)
{
    $playerRow = $rosterRow->find("td");
    $name = $playerRow[0];
    $jersey = $playerRow[1];
    // more can be added, of course.

    $players[$name] = array();
    $players[$name]["jersey"] = $jersey;
    // and others
}

For table

John Appleseed | 12
---------------|----
Richard Brooks | 34

this will result in an array like

{ "John Appleseed" => { "jersey" => 12 }, "Richard Brooks" => { "jersey" => 34}}

Please let me know if this helped.

Answer 2

If you're open to a different approach that may be more scalable/robust, then you may also want to take a look at Kimono Labs . You can use it to create structured API based on ESPN's data. I think you'd be able to define which part of the table held names, scores, etc. and would easily be able to call the API for the desired info.