I would like to open a URL and extract tables from the HTML code of the web

Question

Hi I have opened a URL say www.amazon.com and I would like to extract te tables in that particular web page would somebody out there help me with the code so that the output file displays only the relevant tables containing books and its prices dropping out all other data on the web page . My code for opening the URL goes here. Any quick help would be appreciated
import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;
class ConnectionTest {
public static void main(String[] args) {
try {
URL amazon = new URL("http://www.amazon.com");
URLConnection amazonConnection = amazon.openConnection();
DataInputStream dis = new DataInputStream(amazonConnection.getInputStream());
String inputLine;
while ((inputLine = dis.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println(inputLine);
dis.close();
} catch (MalformedURLException me) {
System.out.println("MalformedURLException: " + me);
} catch (IOException ioe) {
System.out.println("IOException: " + ioe);
}

Answer 1

The quick and dirty way ( Not perfect and will be prone to errors ) :
As you read the lines using readLine(), look for the string "<table>" (Perhaps using String.indexOf ? -- Java API for class String -- http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/lang/String.html)
If the start tag is found, start dumping lines into a String (string concatenation), keep doing it until you find the end tag, using the method mentioned.
Also, you may want to consider the case where <table> or </table> may not be at the beginning of the line, so you may want to use String.substring to selectively extract part of the line that you want to keep.
Oh, and don't assume that the <table> tag is in lower case, and don't forget that there may be other attributes that are defined in the start and end tags.
I wouldn't recommend using this method other than a quick and dirty extraction. If you really want to do things the right way, use a HTML parser or use the Amazon Web Services as paulcw suggested.
Amazon Web Services:
http://aws.amazon.com