Re: Finding an HTML element

> I want to build a tool for data mining from an html page. I want the user to
> select an element from a web page, and train my application to recognize it
> in its later updates. For example, suppose the user wants to extract some
> data from a financial. He want to extract his total balance, plus the table
> of the last transactions. What he should do is to highlight the elements
> inside the html page. After doing that, the application should analyze the
> html element structure, and learns how to find it in similar pages (even
> when they are not identical). What I really need is an algorithm to
> "understand" a single element (by it's structure, position in page or any
> other methods), and then I want to look in a new page, and choose the most
> similar element (which should probably be the right one).

Seems you are trying to "learn" a structure, for example a grammar for
a pattern language. There are a bunch of algorithms out there that can
learn text patterns nicely.

I've seen something like what you described before, I think it was
with the Lexikon Project at DFKI (www.dfki.de). I don't know of any
publications out of the top of my head, though.

Markus

[ comp.ai is moderated.  To submit, just post and be patient, or if ]
[ that fails mail your article to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, and ]
[ ask your news administrator to fix the problems with your system. ]