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For 2023 (and 2024 ...) - we are now fully retired from IT training.
We have made many, many friends over 25 years of teaching about Python, Tcl, Perl, PHP, Lua, Java, C and C++ - and MySQL, Linux and Solaris/SunOS too. Our training notes are now very much out of date, but due to upward compatability most of our examples remain operational and even relevant ad you are welcome to make us if them "as seen" and at your own risk.

Lisa and I (Graham) now live in what was our training centre in Melksham - happy to meet with former delegates here - but do check ahead before coming round. We are far from inactive - rather, enjoying the times that we are retired but still healthy enough in mind and body to be active!

I am also active in many other area and still look after a lot of web sites - you can find an index ((here))
Scraping content for your own page via PHP

If your PHP allows for remote URLs to be handled / read as if they were files (and that's the default), you have useful tool which lets you include the content of one web page (or part of it) within another. For example, I can "scrape" the sections of a coming on a course page and insert them into another page.

Here's an example of the mechanism in use ...

1. Grab the page to be scraped:

$lyne = file_get_contents("http://www.wellho.co.uk/net/join.html");

2. Extract the data you want from it:

$includedtext = "";
preg_match_all("!<dt>(.+?)</dt>.*?<dd>(.+?)</dd>!s",$lyne,$here);
  for ($k=0; $k<count($here[0]); $k++) {
    $includedtext .= "<b>".htmlspecialchars(
      strip_tags($here[1][$k])).
      "</b><br />".     htmlspecialchars(
      strip_tags($here[2][$k])).
      "<br /><br />";
  }


3. Use the $includedtext within your code

You can try this out [here] and see the source code [here]

This example comes with a string of cautions ...

1. Do NOT allow just any old URL to be scraped, especially one that our users may enter. This leaves you open to having your content filled with their adverts!

2. If you are scraping the same page regularly and it doesn't change very much, you should cache the results and not make the inquiry every time.

3. Respect the robots exclusion standard (robots.txt) of the remote site that you're scraping,, and ensure that you have copyright permission to reproduce the material on your site too

4. Remember that if the remote site's format changes so that your regular expression no longer matches, you'll have a correction to make on your site PDQ!

We currently have examples of the use of scraped material on the Melksham Chamber of Commerce home page and also the First Great Western Coffee Shop. "Take the power of this facility ... but be careful how you use it!





(written 2009-12-21, updated 2010-01-06)

 
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
H307 - PHP - Web2 and caching
  [1633] Changing a screen saver from a web page (PHP, Perl, OSX) - (2008-05-06)
  [1647] Exchange Rates - PHP with your prices in your users currency - (2008-05-19)
  [1733] memcached - overview, installation, example of use in PHP - (2008-08-02)
  [1812] Starting Ajax - easy example of browser calling up server data - (2008-09-27)
  [1813] Ajax - going Asyncronous and what it means - (2008-09-28)
  [1814] Javascript/HTML example, dynamic server monitor - (2008-09-28)
  [1926] Flash (client) to PHP (server) - example - (2008-12-06)
  [1995] Automated server heartbeat and health check - (2009-01-16)
  [2196] New Example - cacheing results in PHP for faster loading - (2009-05-24)
  [2321] Uploading and Downloading files - changing names (Perl and PHP) - (2009-08-04)
  [3029] PHP data sources - other web servers, large data flows, and the client (browser) - (2010-11-04)
  [3094] Setting your user_agent in PHP - telling back servers who you are - (2010-12-18)
  [3186] How to add a customised twitter feed to your site - (2011-02-27)
  [3458] On this day ... one PHP script with three uses - (2011-09-26)
  [3955] Building up from a small PHP setup to an enterprise one - (2012-12-16)
  [3999] Handling failures / absences of your backend server nicely - (2013-02-08)
  [4055] Using web services to access you data - JSON and RESTful services - (2013-03-29)
  [4075] Further recent PHP examples - (2013-04-28)
  [4106] Web server efficiency - saving repetition through caches - (2013-05-30)
  [4136] How do I post automatically from a PHP script to my Twitter account? - (2013-07-10)
  [4627] Caching results in an object for efficiency - avoiding re-calculation - (2016-01-20)


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This is a page archived from The Horse's Mouth at http://www.wellho.net/horse/ - the diary and writings of Graham Ellis. Every attempt was made to provide current information at the time the page was written, but things do move forward in our business - new software releases, price changes, new techniques. Please check back via our main site for current courses, prices, versions, etc - any mention of a price in "The Horse's Mouth" cannot be taken as an offer to supply at that price.

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