RE: Convert HTML to plain text -- RPG400-L

Thanks Vern. Looked at the samples, might go that way although while it does work I find it very difficult to get the code to work and coming back later to look at it in 6 months I get totally lost with what it is doing and how/why it works. /<\s*\/?\s*span\s*.*?>/g makes no sense to my brain. But that is my brains problem and might be the best solution. I usually prefer to go with code that is a bit more "wordy".

Here is a very simple sample of what is in the field in the database. It is not a full html page from <html> to </html> it is just a snippet of code in html format. This one only has to deal with but the code could have s and <li>s and a few other goodies if they format the text to look nicer (indents, bullet lists, etc) It will never be the full suite of html, only a small subset which makes it easier.

"Students in baccalaureate programs will take coursework in each of the following categories: Cultural Diversity,Science/Technology/Society and Writing Enriched. Requirements are met in this program with: DIV: MGT 410 WEC: MGT 410, MGT 490 STS: Approved STS elective in Liberal Arts core (see catalog) Directed Electives in this program are: ACC 230, 310, CIM 428, MGT 116, 247, 315, 320, 340, 350, MKT 243, 251, 260, QAL 101 (** At least 3 credits of the 6 must be 300-400 level courses) STUDENTS WILL ENTER THIS PROGRAM WITH AN ASSOCIATE DEGREE WITH A TECHNOLOGY EMPHASIS. Current programs ineligible for this degree are BM, RM, GS, & IS. Courses used in the associate degree cannot be used in the final 4 semesters."

I did the code already to put this into 80 characters chucks or a , whichever occurs first and wrote a line to the print file which resulted in this.

Students in baccalaureate programs will take coursework in each of the following
categories: Cultural Diversity,Science/Technology/Society and Writing Enriched.
Requirements are met in this program with:
DIV: MGT 410
WEC: MGT 410, MGT 490
STS: Approved STS elective in Liberal Arts core (see catalog)
Directed Electives in this program are: ACC 230, 310, CIM 428, MGT 116, 247, 315
, 320, 340, 350, MKT 243, 251, 260, QAL 101
(** At least 3 credits of the 6 must be 300-400 level courses)

STUDENTS WILL ENTER THIS PROGRAM WITH AN ASSOCIATE DEGREE WITH A TECHNOLOGY EMPH
ASIS. Current programs ineligible for this degree are BM, RM, GS, & IS. Co
urses used in the associate degree cannot be used in the final 4 semesters.

Can easily deal with the & but I think the fun will be the word wrap. I may need to parse the string into words and join words together until the length of what is joined plus the length of the next word exceeds 80, then write a line.

-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Vern Hamberg
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2010 8:51 AM
To: RPG programming on the IBM i / System i
Subject: Re: Convert HTML to plain text

Mike

No code, just questions!

Is the HTML in a PF or in a STMF? The latter is preferable, methinks. I can see a couple things to do - first look for closing tags - scan for "</" - and the scan back for the matching opening tag. Then take on the unary (my term) tags like .

There's also the need, perhaps, to take out <html> and <head> and not the contents of <body>.

Or maybe, as I get from another site, it's enough to strip everything between "<" and ">" in that order - unless you have comparison operators in there! Sites in the google below discuss these issues.

I did a quick google on "strip html tags". One link - http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/archive/2003/05/13/6963.aspx - discusses using regular expressions. Another - http://nadeausoftware.com/articles/2007/09/php_tip_how_strip_html_tags_web_page
- discusses issues about text you still want inside some tags.

Looks as if grep or sed or the like could do the work, with an appropriate expression. And those are callable from RPG or CL through QSH.

HTH
Vern

On 9/21/2010 7:13 AM, Mike Cunningham wrote:

Would anyone happen to have RPG code to take HTML and strip off all the tags and just have plain text that would be printed using normal print files? I have a form that needs to be displayed on a web page and also printed from an RPG application. Part of the form is data collected using a rich-text editor on a web page that is stored as HTML in a variable length field. Works great when the form is on a webpage as it is a what-you-see-is-what-you-get function. Any special editing put in the rich-text editor shows on the web page exactly as entered. Problem is taking that html code and printing it using a normal print file to an outq then the printer. Stripping out the html tags might not be too bad. Dealing with tags and tags and<ul><li> can be a bit more challenging but I think word wrap is going to be the hardest. The print file line is 80 characters and I need to be sure to not break a word between lines. Some tricky code and I thought I would just see if anyon!

e !

might have done this already and would share their code.

Thanks

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