How to read another website

[graham23s]

Hi Guys,

 

i was curious as to how i could go about reading parts of another webbsite, say i type a website url in and click submit the script would goto that page and read certain pieces of information i told it to kinda thing

 

what would be the best way to go abput it, i have just mastered xml files you need to load them in first before you can grab the relevant data but not sure how i would go about doing the same for webpages

 

any advice would be great

 

cheers

 

Graham

[pocobueno1388]

You should look into cURL, I think thats what your looking for.

[graham23s]

Hi Mate,

 

thanks i will look into that now, is there any other way apart from cURL out of curiousity?

 

thanks mate

 

Graham

[Hypnos]

If you want to do fancy things like cookies and sending POST data, you'll probably want to look at CURL.

 

For just a basic webpage read, all of the fopen functions will work just as if it was a file on the local drive.

 

<?php
echo file_get_contents("http://www.google.com");

[tippy_102]

I grab parts of a weather page to display on my site and Reg Ex is the key. My finished code is in the bottom post on this page:

http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php/topic,120594.msg494739.html#msg494739

 

It should give you an idea of what needs to be done.

[graham23s]

Hi Guys,

 

it's really for getting the rating from imdn of a movie , for a review site

 

code:

 

<?php
//=====================================================================================//
// IMDB get rating...
//=====================================================================================//

$str_text = file_get_contents("http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0373883/"); 

$pattern = '/(h1|src)=[\'"]/'; 

preg_match_all($pattern, $str_text, $matches); 

echo "<pre>"; 
var_dump($matches); 
echo "</pre>"; 
?>

 

im not to sure how to set up the reg ex for the rating which is incased in this code:

 

</div>
<div class="general rating">
<div class="starbar static"><div class="outer"><div class="inner" style="width: 64px"></div></div></div>
<b>User Rating:</b> 
<b>3.2/10</b> 
  <small>(<a href="ratings">323 votes</a>)</small>
<div class="bottom">

 

the 3.2/10 is the only bit im really after , any help on the reg ex code would be appreciated

 

thanks guys

 

Graham

 

 

[tippy_102]

That should be easy for someone who understands RegEx.  The thing that trips me up is the fact that the part you need to match is spread over two lines.

<b>User Rating:</b>

<b>3.2/10</b>

I hope someone solves this because I would like to see how it is done.