Php getting webcontent suggestions or ideas for websites with login/pass

[falconx]

Hello,  I am a beginner PHP programmer.  I wrote a simple program to obtain stock quotes from yahoo and put those quotes on a site for display.  the script uses file_get_contents() routine to obtain the website for parsing.

 

Recently, I have signedup for a service on investors.com and i would like to use the php program i wrote to access certain ratings/rankings (keep track of ratings..etc).  The problem is that the web site requires users to login with email and password.  And im not sure how to go about to access the page using php with my login and pass. 

 

The website uses .asp and it can remember your session as long as you dont logout.  What are some of the ways to get the web content using php from a website that requires login and password?

 

Thanks

[DarkWater]

You use cURL to post the login data to the login page (where the login form points) then you retrieve the page with cURL.

[gigas10]

leave a browser up on that site logged in, and dont log out :-p

[Jabop]

leave a browser up on that site logged in, and dont log out :-p

 

that is a bad suggestion. use cURL.

[gigas10]

oh shot down

[anon_login_001]

cURL probably is the best solution for this. Take your time figuring out how to do it right though... you don't want to go shooting your username/password (to whichever site) around the internet in plain text.

 

 

[falconx]

Thank you guys for the suggestion, I will read up on cURL and try it out.  Im sure I will have questions on this   For now, thanks for all your effort.