How to get the highest numbered link from curl result? - bash

Question

i have create small program consisting of a couple of shell scripts that work together, almost finished
and everything seems to work fine, except for one thing of which i'm not really sure how to do..
which i need, to be able to finish this project...
there seem to be many routes that can be taken, but i just can't get there...
i have some curl results with lots of unused data including different links, and between all data there is a bunch of similar links
i only need to get (into a variable) the link of the highest number (without the always same text)
the links are all similar, and have this structure:
always same text
always same text
always same text
i was thinking about something like;
content="$(curl -s "$url/$param")"
linksArray= get from $content all links that are in the href section of the links
that contain "always same text"
declare highestnumber;
for file in $linksArray
do
href=${1##*/}
fullname=${href%.html}
OIFS="$IFS"
IFS='_'
read -a nameparts <<< "${fullname}"
IFS="$OIFS"
if ${nameparts[1]} > $highestnumber;
then
highestnumber=${nameparts[1]}
fi
done
echo ${nameparts[1]}_${highestnumber}.html
result:
https://always/same/link/unique-name_19.html
this was just my guess, any working code that can be run from bash script is oke...
thanks...
update
i found this nice program, it is easily installed by:
# 64bit version
wget -O xidel/xidel_0.9-1_amd64.deb https://sourceforge.net/projects/videlibri/files/Xidel/Xidel%200.9/xidel_0.9-1_amd64.deb/download
apt-get -y install libopenssl
apt-get -y install libssl-dev
apt-get -y install libcrypto++9
dpkg -i xidel/xidel_0.9-1_amd64.deb
it looks awsome, but i'm not really sure how to tweak it to my needs.
based on that link and the below answer, i guess a possible solution would be..
use xidel, or use "$ sed -n 's/.href="([^"]).*/\1/p' file" as suggested in this link, but then tweak it to get the link with html tags like:
< a href="https://always/same/link/same-name_17.html">always same text< /a>
then filter out all that doesn't end with ( ">always same text< /a> )
and then use the grep sort as mentioned below.

Answer 1

Continuing from the comment, you can use grep, sort and tail to isolate the highest number of your list of similar links without too much trouble. For example, if you list of links is as you have described (I've saved them in a file dat/links.txt for the purpose of the example), you can easily isolate the highest number in a variable:
Example List
$ cat dat/links.txt
always same text
always same text
always same text
Parsing the Highest Numbered Link
$ myvar=$(grep -o 'https:.*[.]html' dat/links.txt | sort | tail -n1); \
echo "myvar : '$myvar'"
myvar : 'https://always/same/link/same-name_19.html'
(note: the command above is all one line separate by the line-continuation '\')
Applying Directly to Results of curl
Whether your list is in a file, or returned by curl -s, you can apply the same approach to isolate the highest number link in the returned list. You can use process substitution with the curl command alone, or you can pipe the results to grep. E.g. as noted in my original comment,
$ myvar=$(grep -o 'https:.*[.]html' < <(curl -s "$url/$param") | sort | tail -n1); \
echo "myvar : '$myvar'"
or pipe the result of curl to grep,
$ myvar=$(curl -s "$url/$param" | grep -o 'https:.*[.]html' | sort | tail -n1); \
echo "myvar : '$myvar'"
(same line continuation note.)

Answer 2

Why not use Xidel with xquery to sort the links and return the last?
xidel -q links.txt --xquery "(for $i in //#href order by $i return $i)[last()]" --input-format xml
The input-format parameter makes sure you don't need any html tags at the start and ending of your txt file.
If I'm not mistaken, in the latest Xidel the -q (quiet) param is replaced by -s (silent).