Hi,
just something I was wondering, is it possible to retrieve specific info from another website to use on your own, using php (or something alike)
For example: there is this website that has some great stats that I would like to use. I would also like these stats on my forum. Is it possible to write something to get this specific piece of information on that other website?
Or even just take a picture of some content on that other website, and display it...?
Just a small window that gives a view on these stats, that's what I want.
I don't mind if ppl see it comes from that other website, and the website owner, who doesn't want to give the code for these stats, doesn't mind other people using them.
Is there anything like this possible, or not?
Kinda say to your forum, fetch info at that exact location on that other website, and display it here...?
I'm sorry if I can't explain exactly what I'l looking for, but I don't know. I just want to give a view on some information that update frequently and from which I don't have the code...
PHP code is done server side so your normal 'view source' methods won't work, not sure if there is any other way to see the websites code. That said if you post a link to the page here and point out the features you are interested in I am sure we can figure out how to do them.
http://clans.tremulous.net/?p=info&id=44
The FSN team is the team I'm part of. It's also for this team that I use my hosting.
(http://teamfsn.frih.net/phpBB2/)
What I would like to have it only this:
It is quite easy. use file_get_contents to retrieve the html source of the url.
| Code: |
| $filedata = file_get_contents("http://clans.tremulous.net/?p=info&id=44 "); |
Then use string functions to extract the data you need from the $filedata. I'll try that.
It'll probably take a while before I get how this works, but at least it sounds like a plan.
Hopefully the other site doens't change his layout then, or I'll have a problem.
Thanks for the tip!
You can use something like this, or play with preg/ereg.
| Code: |
<?php
$text = file_get_contents("http://clans.tremulous.net/?p=info&id=44");
// find first fosition of start tag
$start = strpos($text,'<fieldset class="players">');
// find first position of close tag after start tag
$length = strpos($text,'</fieldset>',$start) - $start;
// echo a part of page
echo substr($text,$start,$length);
?> |
Hey thanks!
you did all the work for me!
This gives exactly what I needed!
Well that's something new I learned 
Thanks for the help, all of you ! dude i suggest using cURL.... search on google for cURL tutorials....m sure u'll love it
I wouldn't. Why use funky includes when you've got all you need right there in 4 lines? cURL is good for if you want to do all sorts of things with different doobries, but if you only want this one thing it's best to just use the code posted above.
EDIT: Oh, and the great thing about that site is it's properly formatted. So the HTML is probably not going to change at all, even if the website gets completely redesigned. In other words, you can be sure that the code you'll need in PHP won't change.
use curl it's damn easy....
this example will fetch yahoo.com into yahoo.txt on ur server....
I guess Frih.net accounts support cUrl 2 some extent....
| Code: |
<?php
$ch = curl_init("http://www.yahoo.com/");
$fp = fopen("yahoo.txt", "w");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
fclose($fp);
?> |
edit by rvec: please use the code tags YES 
it's damn easy
| Code: |
| $text = file_get_contents("http://yahoo.com/"); |
vs.
| Code: |
$ch = curl_init("http://www.yahoo.com/");
$fp = fopen("yahoo.txt", "w");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
fclose($fp);
// TODO: read yahoo.txt contents because you still don't have anything ;)
// for example by this code :-P
// $text = file_get_contents("yahoo.txt");
|
cURL is much faster to use but file() gets the page into an array which is easier to split up.
For some examples go here. cURL is definitely an excellent option
I while learning about it had actually written a script that will log into rediffmail.com account and extract all the emails and contacts in the addressbook
This script is generally used by many social networking websites and is an excellent example of getting stuff from other websites and displaying them on your own
| Code: |
<?php
$cookie_jar = "manav.txt";
$username = "Your Rediffmail username";
$password = "Your Rediffmail password";
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,"http://mail.rediff.com/cgi-bin/login.cgi");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, $cookie_jar);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0)");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "FormName=existing&login=$username&passwd=$password&proceed=GO");
$html = curl_exec($ch);
$man=strpos($html,"function do_logout()");
$html = substr_replace($html,'',0,$man);
$m = strpos($html,"session_id=");
$m = $m+11;
$sessionidm = substr($html,$m,32);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,"http://f4mail.rediff.com/bn/address.cgi?login=$username&session_id=$sessionidm&amp;FormName=group_book");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
$html = curl_exec($ch);
$mn="<select size=\"5\" name=\"D1\" multiple>";
$firstselect = strpos($html,$mn);
$ms = "</select><BR>";
$lastselect = strpos($html,$ms);
$diff = $lastselect - $firstselect;
$finallist = substr($html,$firstselect,$diff);
echo ("".$finallist);
?> |
Easiest way to do it would be:
- RSS feeds (if the site supplies one)
-Iframes (not supported in NetScape 4 or lower)
- or use the Include(); function
Be careful when requesting information from other websites though. Copyright is becoming an increasing problem amoungst internet sites, just remember to request to use the information and to correctly source where its from.
Louis.
| manav wrote: |
cURL is definitely an excellent option
|
I can't use it. With just this line:
$ch = curl_init();
I get this error:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function curl_init() in /home/...
Is there something I need to do to enable Curl? I'm on server 1.Find out whether curl is enabled in server 1 or not... take a blank php page, and execute php_info() to get the php configuration on your server...
http://www.frihost.com/phpinfo.php
Like that
| Code: |
| cURL support enabled |
