Accessing and printing HTML source code using PHP or JavaScript

Question

I am trying to access and then print (or just be able to use) the source code of any website using PHP. I am not very experienced and am now thinking I might need to use JS to accomplish this. So far, the code below accesses the source code of a web page and displays the web page... What I want it to do instead is display the source code. Essentially, and most importantly, I want to be able to store the source code in some sort of variable so I can use it later. And eventually read it line-by-line - but this can be tackled later.

$url = 'http://www.google.com';
function get_data($url) 
{
    $ch = curl_init();
    $timeout = 5;
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $timeout);
    $data = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);
    return $data;
}
echo get_data($url); //print and echo do the same thing in this scenario.

You can use `document.body.innerHTML`, pretty simple, isn't it? — gdoron, Dec 27 '12 at 22:35
Can you explain this further? Maybe give an example? @gdoron — rwbarg15, Dec 27 '12 at 23:13

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 27 '12 at 22:38

2

~~Consider using file_get_contents() instead of curl.~~ You can then display the code on your page by replacing every opening bracket (<) with < and then outputting it to the page.

<?php
$code = file_get_contents('http://www.google.com');
$code = str_replace('<', '&lt;', $code);
echo $code;
?>

Edit:
Looks like curl is actually faster than FGC, so ignore that suggestion. The rest of my post still stands. :)

answered Dec 27 '12 at 22:38

SenorAmor

3,351
16
27

Set the content-type as plain-text? – HMarioD Dec 27 '12 at 22:49
+1 I did not know `cURL` was faster than `file_get_contents` for remote connections. – Mihai Stancu Dec 27 '12 at 22:52
@SenorAmor It prints out 'Resource id #1' and that's it! – rwbarg15 Dec 27 '12 at 23:09

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 27 '12 at 22:50

1

You should try to print the result between <pre></pre> tags;

echo '<pre>' . get_data($url) . '</pre>';

answered Dec 27 '12 at 22:50

Isaac Zepeda

300
3
10

This didn't seem to work. It only changed some of the fonts and formatting of the displayed web page. – rwbarg15 Dec 27 '12 at 23:15
maybe `echo '
```
'; print_r(get_data($url)); echo '';`
```
– Isaac Zepeda Aug 14 '13 at 17:04

Gilly · Answer 3 · 2012-12-28T01:08:00.603

I rewrote your function. The function can return the source with lines or without lines.

<?php 
function get_data($url, $Addlines = false){
    $ch = curl_init($url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_BINARYTRANSFER, true);
    $content = curl_exec($ch);
    $content = htmlspecialchars($content); // Prevents the browser to parse the html

    curl_close($ch);

    if ($Addlines == true){
        $content = explode("\n", $content);
        $Count = 0;
        foreach ($content as $Line){
            $lines = $lines .= 'Line '.$Count.': '.$Line.'<br />';
            $Count++;
        }
        return $lines;
    } else {
        $content = nl2br($content);
        return $content;
    }
}


echo get_data('https://www.google.com/', true); // Source code with lines
echo get_data('https://www.google.com/'); // Source code without lines
?>

Hope it gets you on your way.

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 27 '12 at 23:21

0

Add a header Content-Type: text/plain

header("Content-Type: plain/text");

answered Dec 27 '12 at 23:21

HMarioD

842
10
18

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 13 '14 at 10:38

0

Use htmlspecialchars() in php to print the source code.

In your code, use

return htmlspecialchars($data);

instead of

return $data;

answered Jan 13 '14 at 10:38

Vivek

4,526
17
56
69

Accessing and printing HTML source code using PHP or JavaScript

5 Answers5

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