HTML Anchor Tag Parsing

After this assignment, you should be able to:

• Write C++ functions and call them
• Work with text files using the < fstream > library

Here are the requirements:

The program will read in the name of a text file, open it, and print to the screen any URL's found in HTML anchor elements

• An anchor element looks like < a href="some URL" > text that is display for link < /a >.
• If the file cannot be opened, display an error message to cerr, as shown below

The program needs to include at least two functions (you are free to write more):

• find(ifstream &, string) - takes a reference to a file for input and reads words until either it finds the target string (the 2nd parameter) or the end of the file is reached.
  • Return true if the string is found, false if not
  • This function only detects the string if it is a separate work, not if it is a substring, so looking for "he" in "hello there" would return false
  • [Note that you have to pass the ifstream as a reference. Think about what it would mean to pass an ifstream by value.]
• getURL(ifstream &) - this assumes you have opened and read the ifstream up to and including the < a. This function returns the string between the double-quotes after the href=
  • A useful function here is the version of getline() that accepts a 3rd parameter, a char that is the delimiter. The delimiter is what getline() uses to separate "lines". For getURL(), the double-quote character is exactly what we need as a delimiter

Your main() must call the above functions to do its job

• Hint: the functions should not call each other, as their prototypes do not support helping each other

For a given file a.html like:

< !—This is a slightly edited
from https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/a -- >
< p >You can reach Michael at:< /p >
< ul >
< li >< a href="https://example.com">Website< /a >< /li >
< li >< a href="mailto:m.bluth@example.com" >Email< /a >< /li >
< li >< a href=tel:+123456789 >Phone< /a >< /li >
< /ul >

Here is what the output should look like:

This program extracts and displays URLs from anchor elements in a HTML file

File to process: a.html
https://example.com
mailto:m.bluth@example.com
tel:+123456789

If the program cannot open the file, the output should look like:

This program extracts and displays URLs from anchor elements in a HTML file

File to process: b.html
Could not open b.html