[Question/Request] Read out Datas from a Website with php?

[sheepking]

Like the title already says(is that right?): I need help with my script. I want to filter out a little thing form a Website. Its a little Box and theres a Motd wich changes daily. Now I want my website to read out the motd and 'simply' show it in that box of my site.

Here's the code I already made:

PHP Code:

<?php
$url = "http://www.schuelervz.net/";

$startstring = '<div id="LeftsideBox">
    <div>
        <p>';

$endstring = "</p>"; 

$file = @fopen ($url,"r");

if (trim($file) == "") {
    echo "Service out of order";
    } else {
    $i=0;
    while (!feof($file)) {

        $zeile[$i] = fgets($file,20000);
        $i++;
    }
    fclose($file);
}

for ($j=0;$j<$i;$j++) {
    if ($resa = strstr($zeile[$j],$startstring)) {
        $resb = str_replace($startstring, "", $resa);
        $endstueck = strstr($resb, $endstring);
        $result .= str_replace($endstueck,"",$resb);
        $result .= "; ";
    }
}

$result = ".$result";
return $result;
?>

[Sirupsen]

You'd probably have to do that by parsing the XML, read about that on W3Schools.
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]
(That will only work of course if that website has XML.)
I don't think there's any other way, if you can't customize that page.

[sheepking]

Originally Posted by Sirupsen

You'd probably have to do that by parsing the XML, read about that on W3Schools.
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]
(That will only work of course if that website has XML.)
I don't think there's any other way, if you can't customize that page.

Hmm, maybe you're right, but I just want to read the website in [file_get_contents() or fopen()] and then delete code I don't need and just show that part of the string wich goes from

<div id="LeftsideBox">

to

</p>

Or I just got an other Idea

Is it possible to write something with a php-script and also delete the whole thing (or just blend out) what was written before?

[Sirupsen]

Like, theres something by default, when the PHP script runs, the default stuff get's replaced with something else?

[Lockhead]

it's a very easy task:

PHP Code:

<?php
$url = "http://www.schuelervz.net";

$version = phpversion();

function a_strstr($haystack, $needle, $before_needle = false) {
    if(($pos = strpos($haystack, $needle)) === false) { return false; }
    if($before_needle) { return substr($haystack, 0, $pos + strlen($needle)); }
    return substr($haystack,$pos);
}

$pat1 = '<div id="LeftsideBox">
    <div>
        <p>';
$pat2 = '<p>';
$pat3 = '</p>    </div>
</div>
            
        </div>
        <br class="Clear-The-Evil-Float" />';
$pat4 = '</p>';
$content = file_get_contents($url);
$content = a_strstr($content, $pat1, false);
$content = a_strstr($content, $pat2, false);
$content = substr($content, 3);
$content = a_strstr($content, $pat3, true);
$content = a_strstr($content, $pat4, true);
$content = substr($content, 0, strlen($content)-4);
echo $content;
?>

If you have PHP 5.3.0 installed you can delete the function declaration and have to rename a_strstr to strstr. Because PHP 5.3.0 brings the befor/after flag for this function and so my additional function is noch needed.

[freakyflow]

The easiest way to do this is with rss and a php rss parser. You barely have to write anything.

If you site already pushes rss then you just need to get a php rss script and throw in some tags.

[Lockhead]

The Problem here is that the specific site doesn't have a RSS feed for there motd, so sheepking want to leech that info.

XML Parsing is a really easy task in php and other language too, but that was not the question

[Gravecorp]

I sent you a pm. I have done these types of things before. So it shouldn't be so hard to do it again. Just need the site url. What part you need extracted and i will cook you up some code.

[Gravecorp]

Here is the working code. I stuck it in a function so you can call it whenever you want to.
Have fun

function grabHTML() {
	//Set this value to true to strip out only the <div> tags
	$stripDivs = false;
	//Set this value to true to strip out all html tags
	$stripHtml = false;
	//The 2 values below are used for the script.
	$html = "";
	$boolLeftSideBox = false;
	//Open the site and start reading.
	$website = file('http://www.schuelervz.net/Default');
	foreach($website as $line) {
		if(eregi('<div id="LeftsideBox">', $line)) {
			$boolLeftSideBox = true;
			continue;
		}
		if($boolLeftSideBox) {
			if(eregi('<div>', $line)) {
				$html .= $line;
			} else {
				$html .= $line;
				if($stripDivs) {
					$html = str_replace('<div>', '', $html);
					$html = str_replace('</div>', '', $html);
				}
				if($stripHtml) {
					$html = strip_tags($html);
				}
				return $html;
			}
		}
	}
}

echo grabHTML();

[sheepking]

Very, very good!

Works!

Thank you very much!

+rep x2

(Just the prob that I'm using a Free hoster wich is forbidding the most of your arguments, but works fine with xampp)