HTML source code of external webpage as string

Question

A user on my website will enter a url (a public page on another domain) in a textbox. I want to fetch the HTML source code that page as a string. How to do this using client side scripting ?

Following is what I did to load url. But not able to figure out how to fetch html.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<head>
<script>
function myFunction()
{
document.getElementById("site").src=document.getElementById("web").value;
}
</script>
</head>
<body> 
<input id="web" type="text" name="user">
<input type="submit" value="Submit"  onclick="myFunction()"> <br/>
<iframe id="site" src="" width="1200" height="1200"></iframe>

</body>
</html>

@JohnFx It will be nice if u explain why this is a bad question. I will improve on it. — Ashni Goyal, Feb 08 '13 at 19:05
You didn't post any code of what you have done to try to solve the problem, or give a link to your site that shows a clear attempt to solve the problem yourself. — howderek, Feb 08 '13 at 19:07
@Ashni Goyal - Your original post amounts to "Do my job for me." You have to ask an actual question instead of asking us to write code for you. — JohnFx, Feb 08 '13 at 20:37

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 08 '13 at 19:00

3

Create a script on your server, and call it using AJAX, then use cURL like so:

 $ch = curl_init();
 $timeout = 10;
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
 curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $timeout);

 $data = curl_exec($ch);

 curl_close($ch);

And $data will contain the contents.

answered Feb 08 '13 at 19:00

Tom Walters

15,366
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This is php code . I wanted to use javascript to achieve this . Any JS way possible ? – Ashni Goyal Feb 08 '13 at 19:04
2

No you can't do this in JS for security reasons. You'd have to use a method like this and implement AJAX as I said. – Tom Walters Feb 08 '13 at 19:06
Are you talking about single origin policy ? – Ashni Goyal Feb 08 '13 at 19:08
1

Indeed, check out [this community wiki](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3076414/ways-to-circumvent-the-same-origin-policy) on the topic. – Tom Walters Feb 08 '13 at 19:09

user2055306 · Answer 2 · 2013-02-09T12:09:39.297

2

I'm afraid the javascript on your website can't access the source code of other websites due to the Same Origin Policy. This is to prevent Cross Site Scripting attacks. For example, if the user was logged into their email account, the Same Origin Policy prevents other websites, open in the same browser, from trying to access your email.

Your best bet is to:

Send the url to your application server via AJAX
Perform a HTTP GET from your application server (in Java / PHP etc)
Reply to the AJAX request with the text of the other website
Then show the source code to your user

edited Feb 09 '13 at 12:09

answered Feb 08 '13 at 19:09

user2055306

41
3

I really do not want to go to server. – Ashni Goyal Feb 08 '13 at 19:24
I know it's more work to go back to the server but I'm afraid there's just no way of doing this in the client. There are security concerns around cross site scripting that makes modern browsers block this functionality. – user2055306 Feb 08 '13 at 20:12
but this should be applicable for private data not for public webpage. – Ashni Goyal Feb 08 '13 at 21:03

HTML source code of external webpage as string

2 Answers2

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