Downloading and parsing web-stuff

Very basic:

What is the easiest way in php to download the source code (HTML etc.)
of a given URL (say, http://www.google.com) and parse this code for
certain patterns?

I guess my question can be split in two:

1) How do I download a webpage (into a string or whatever)?

2) How can I do string manupulation, regexp matching, information
extraction etc. on the downloaded information?

/David

David Rasmussen wrote:
> I guess my question can be split in two:
>
> 1) How do I download a webpage (into a string or whatever)?

$string = file_get_contents('http://some.url/blah');

> 2) How can I do string manupulation, regexp matching, information
> extraction etc. on the downloaded information?

now look at the docs for preg_match or ereg
I prefer preg_match

if ( preg_match('|<title>(.*?)</title>|',$string,$matches) )
{
print_r($matches);
}

Treat a full URL as a file.

$contents = implode( file("http://www.google.com/", ''\n") );

Then go to www.php.net/preg_match/ to read up on PCRE (Perl compatible
regular expressions). See also ereg_* functions.

HTH.

-Mike

--
Melt away the Cellulite with Cellulean!
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"David Rasmussen" <david.rasmussen@gmx.net> wrote in message
news:42683c71$0$158$edfadb0f@dtext02.news.tele.dk. ..
> Very basic:
>
> What is the easiest way in php to download the source code (HTML etc.)
> of a given URL (say, http://www.google.com) and parse this code for
> certain patterns?
>
> I guess my question can be split in two:
>
> 1) How do I download a webpage (into a string or whatever)?
>
> 2) How can I do string manupulation, regexp matching, information
> extraction etc. on the downloaded information?
>
> /David
>