PHP to parse HTML

Dave!

Hey there,

There's a series of webpages from which I want to retrieve certain data. I've managed to figure out how to do it pretty much, except I'm getting errors due to all of the apostrophes (') and quotation marks (").

This is the script I'm using:

$str = '

<!-- HTML goes here -->

';
	$DOM = new DOMDocument;
	@$DOM->loadHTML($str);
    $DOM->preserveWhiteSpace = false;
	$DOM->validateOnParse = true;

    $tables = $DOM->getElementByID('report');
	$rows = $tables->getElementsByTagName('td');
	foreach ($rows as $row) {
		$att = $row->getAttribute("headers");
		if($att == "header5") {
			$v = $row->nodeValue;
			echo $v.'<br />';
		}
	}

I was just using the above to test whether I'm able to parse the correct data, and I am, but it requires me to go through the HTML and delete/whatever all the characters that are confusing PHP.

Obviously what I want to do is just pass the URL into the script, have it go through the elements and give me the relevant information.

How can I avoid the parse error I'm receiving?

And also, what method/s can I use to just pass a URL/file rather than a string?

Cheeeeeeeeers

Dave!

Well that was pretty easy

<?php
//$str = 'Dave';

$str = file_get_contents('http://www.nwhc.usgs.gov/publications/quarterly_reports/1995_qtr_1.jsp');

	$DOM = new DOMDocument;
	@$DOM->loadHTML($str);
	
    $DOM->preserveWhiteSpace = false;
	$DOM->validateOnParse = true;

    $tables = $DOM->getElementByID('report');
	$rows = $tables->getElementsByTagName('td');
	foreach ($rows as $row) {
		$att = $row->getAttribute("headers");
		if($att == "header5") {
			$v = $row->nodeValue;
			echo $v.'<br />';
		}
	}


?>