best way to extract elements from a html page?

Question

What is the preferred way to extract elements from a HTML page in Java?

My HTML is has many of the following rows:

<tr class="item-odd">
       <td class="data"><a href="http://....."&gt;TITLE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
       <td><div class="cost">$1.99</div></td>
</tr>

The class alternates item-odd and item-even.

I need to extract:

1. Url
2. Title
3. price

Is regular expressions the way to go?

Answer 1

I'd use a library like HTML Parser for this job. Have a look at the samples and/or the javadoc. Also have a look at previous questions here on SO.

HTML Parser is pretty easy to use and should do the job. For alternatives, have a look at this previous answer.

Answer 2

JTidy does an excellent job of parsing HTML and making it available for manipulation as a DOM. Regular expressions are generally not the way to go, since HTML isn't regular and have numerous edge cases to trip you up.