Replacing section of HTML file

Tedh posted this at 11:12 — 26th April 2007.

Joined: Nov 2004

Hi, I am trying to replace a section of an HTML document while keeping the rest of it intact.

Original (test.html)

<html>
<head>
<title>Test</title>
</head>
<body>
Text and code that stays
<!--a-->
Replace this and everything below
</body>
</html>

This is where I've got to:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use CGI::Carp qw(warningsToBrowser fatalsToBrowser);
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

$file = "test.html"; # Page to edit

# Open the file #######
open(TFL, "<$file") || die "Can't open $file\n";
@thefile=<TFL>;
close(TFL);

open(TFL, ">$file") || die "Can't open $file\n";
foreach $line (@thefile){
   if($line =~ /<!--a-->/i) {
      print TFL "<!--a-->\n";
      print TFL "New Stuff\n</body>\n</html>\n";
   }
}
close(TFL);
exit;
# end

When I use this, the entire file gets replaced.

How do I replace only the file contents after the "!--a--" tag?

Hope someone can help, many thanks - Ted

Good.Things posted this at 19:50 — 1st May 2007.

He has: 6 posts

Joined: Apr 2007

I don't know what language this is but I can almost assure you this is the line you want to modify :

if($line =~ //i)

It's controlling everything else more or less.

Good Things Services

Abhishek Reddy posted this at 04:19 — 2nd May 2007.

He has: 3,348 posts

Joined: Jul 2001

You probably want something like this:

sub replace_from_mark {
    my ($mark, $newstuff, $text) = @_;
    $text =~ s/$mark.*/$newstuff/gs;
    return $text;
}

# ...

open(TFL, ">$file") || die "Can't open $file\n";
$text = replace_from_mark("<!--a-->\n",
                          "New Stuff\n</body>\n</html>\n",
                          join("", @thefile));
print TFL $text;
close(TFL);

Instead of walking every line, it uses a regular expression substitution.

Tedh posted this at 09:32 — 2nd May 2007.

They have: 21 posts

Joined: Nov 2004

Thanks Abhishek,
I'll check this out soon (in the middle of some work at moment) and let you know how it goes.

cheers - Ted

Tedh posted this at 11:45 — 2nd May 2007.

They have: 21 posts

Joined: Nov 2004

Abhishek, that works a treat. Many, many thanks.

I'm able to replace an entire lower part of html page no problem (which is one of my objectives).

I ended up putting the new stuff into a variable

#!perl

use CGI::Carp qw(warningsToBrowser fatalsToBrowser);
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
# Variables
$file = "test.html"; # Page to edit
$mark="<!--a-->";
$newstuff = "<!--a-->\nAll my new stuff";

# Open the file #######
open(TFL, "<$file") || die "Can't open $file\n";
@thefile=<TFL>;
close(TFL);

sub replace_from_mark {
    my ($mark, $newstuff, $text) = @_;
    $text =~ s/$mark.*/$newstuff/gs;
    return $text;
}

# Replace it

open(TFL, ">$file") || die "Can't open $file\n";
$text = replace_from_mark("$mark\n", "$newstuff\n<\/body>\n<\/html>\n", join("", @thefile));
print TFL $text;
close(TFL);
print "The code has been replaced\n";
exit;
# end