Can I filter elements by partial attribute values in Simple HTML DOM?

Yes, with Simple HTML DOM, a PHP library designed for web scraping and manipulating HTML elements, you can filter elements by partial attribute values. This is similar to using attribute selectors in CSS, where you can match elements based on substring matches within attribute values.

Simple HTML DOM supports various types of attribute selectors that are analogous to those in CSS, such as:

• [attribute^=value]: This selector matches elements whose attribute value begins with the specified value.
• [attribute$=value]: This selector matches elements whose attribute value ends with the specified value.
• [attribute*=value]: This selector matches elements whose attribute value contains the specified value anywhere within it.

Here's an example of how to use Simple HTML DOM to filter elements by partial attribute values:

include('simple_html_dom.php');

$html = str_get_html('
    <div>
        <a href="http://example.com/page1.html">Page 1</a>
        <a href="http://example.com/page2.html">Page 2</a>
        <a href="http://example.net/page3.html">Page 3</a>
    </div>
');

// Find links that have 'example.com' in their href attribute
$links = $html->find('a[href*=example.com]');

foreach ($links as $link) {
    echo $link->href . "\n";
    // This will output:
    // http://example.com/page1.html
    // http://example.com/page2.html
}

// Find links that start with 'http://example.com'
$links_start = $html->find('a[href^=http://example.com]');

foreach ($links_start as $link) {
    echo $link->href . "\n";
    // This will output the same as the previous example
}

// Find links that end with 'page1.html'
$links_end = $html->find('a[href$=page1.html]');

foreach ($links_end as $link) {
    echo $link->href . "\n";
    // This will output:
    // http://example.com/page1.html
}

In the code above, we first include the Simple HTML DOM library and use str_get_html to parse a string of HTML. We then use different attribute selectors to find <a> elements with href attributes that match specific patterns.

Remember to include the Simple HTML DOM library in your project before using the code above. You can download it from its official website or include it using Composer:

composer require simplehtmldom/simplehtmldom

After installing, you would typically include it in your PHP script as follows:

require_once 'vendor/autoload.php';

use simplehtmldom\HtmlWeb;

// ... rest of your scraping code

Be aware that web scraping might be against the terms of service of some websites, so always ensure you have the right to scrape the content you plan to access and that you're following ethical and legal guidelines.