Reading HTML source and finding specific URL's

[Kairu]

Ok! I have a new project starting and I need a little help.

 

I am creating some images that will change what they display depending on what is in a database. To populate it, I am having users input their username. (This is on a forum)

 

The user will click to a PHP page, which will ask for their username. I want to take the username, and retrieve the source from the page "http://www.gaiaonline.com/p/<username>".

 

I then need to search out the string "/forum/searchposts/" and take the numbers after it, convert them into hex, and then search for the first URL containing that hex value.

 

I dont know where to start with grabbing the source. Or searching within it.

 

The rest I can probably handle.

[LemonInflux]

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=regex&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

 

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[Kairu]

But how would I go about downloading the source to regex it?

[Wolphie]

If it was me I'd look into using sockets, however you could just use file_get_contents().

 

PHP Reference: http://uk.php.net/manual/en/function.file-get-contents.php

[Kairu]

Well, I finished something that works. I dont know if it is that productive, as it takes a while to finish.

 

Anyone see any improvements I can make?

 

<?php
$search = 'http://www.gaiaonline.com/p/' . $_GET['u'];
$content =  file_get_contents($search);
$array = split('"', $content);

for($i=0; $i<=count($array); $i++)
{
    if(ereg("/forum/searchposts/", $array[$i]) != false || ereg("/forum/myposts/", $array[$i]) != false)
    {
        $temp = $array[$i];
    }
}
$temp = explode('/', $temp);
$ID = $temp[3];

$HEX = dechex($ID);

for($i=0; $i<=count($array); $i++)
{
    if(ereg($HEX, $array[$i]) != false)
    {
        $URL = $array[$i];
    }
}

?>