Table structure in documents
As mentioned previously, Documents are modeled by Elements which are hierarchically linked according to the content structure in the document. To manipulate a table structure it is necessary to know how a document models HTML code for a table.
In HTML a table is coded like this
<table>
<tr>
<td>
<p>
row 1, column 1
</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>
row 1, column 2
</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>
row 2, column 1
</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>
row 2, column 2
</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
Rendered inside a document above HTML code might show as follows (display differs depending on style sheet settings)
row 1, column 1 |
row 1, column 2 |
row 2, column 1 |
row 2, column 2 |
The element strucutre to be generated inside a document has to be built similar to the HTML code above. Above table viewed with the ElementTree class in SimplyHTML would produce a view such as the following.
To manipulate a table or its parts, an application has to work on that element strucutre and its attributes.
Note: To find out or try how a document's element structure look like, SimplyHTML's ElementTree function is quite helpful. It shows a window as shown with a tree having a node for each element in the element structure of the currently shown document. All element attributes are shown next to each tree node.