input url output parced data from page source

[tobykw13]

Ok so I have multiple questions... I guess a series of questions to get me to the final product that I'm looking for. I am very new to php, but have done some reading on the basics on what I believe I need to accomplish. So let me just put it all out there and hopefully someone will understand what Im looking for and help me out

 

I have a custom myspace design site that I am working on and I need to implement a feature that I have seen on other myspace layout sites. In a nutshell, I need a form where you input a myspace url and when you submit the url it retrieves all the data from the page's source (screen scraping?), then retrieve a specified attribute out of this data (parsing?) and then implement that attribute into multiple areas of a specified html document. Im not sure if this makes any sense so I will be even more specific and give an example of what I want to accomplish:

 

I input http://www.myspace.com/isabellebanham into a form. When submitted, the page source is retrieved. in the page source is a section that looks as follows:

 

MySpace.ClientContext = {"UserId":257367900,"DisplayFriendId":13287930,"IsLoggedIn":true};

 

I need to extract the number 13287930 that follows "DisplayFriendId": (i believe this is done with parsing the data?) and then finally take that number and insert it into new urls:

 

http://mail.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=mail.message&friendID=INSERT NUMBER HERE

 

http://chat.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=messenger&strDestinationUserID=INSERT NUMBER HERE&sendType=0

 

So all in all you input a myspace url and the output shows a number of urls with the extracted number implemented into it

 

an exact example of this whole process can be found at: http://www.bbzspace.com/overlay/link.php

 

as I said, I am very new to php so I am having a lot of difficulty figuring this out, but it seems very possible. Anyone that can help I will love forever! lol If this is confusing just ask me and ill try to explain anything you aren't understanding. Thanks in advance!!

[tobykw13]

anyone?