How do I pull data from another website?

[HawaiiThad]

Hi,
 
First post. please bear with me. I'll try not to act like a complete noob. ;-)
 
I am trying to pull some data from another web page. Here is my code:

 <?php

     if ($chart_URL = file_get_contents("http://thad.com", r)) {

         <!-- Some code -->

     } else {

         echo "Error4";

     }

 ?>

And of course when I look at the source code of my web page in my browser I see the 'Error4'.

[QuickOldCar]

Using curl is better, you can also use a stream context for more control file_get_contents.

 

Check for exactly false for failure.

$chart_URL = file_get_contents("http://thad.com");

if($chart_URL === FALSE){

        echo "Error4";

     } else {

         echo $chart_URL;

     }

[QuickOldCar]

As for the scraping data aspect:

curl (to me is the best method to connect and can also follow redirects)

file_get_contents (fast and easy, can create a stream context but still limited in what you can do, it will fail a lot)

preg_match or preg_match_all

simplehtmldom

dom

simplexml