Pull text from another website

Question

Is it possible to pull text data from another domain (not currently owned) using php? If not any other method? I've tried using Iframes, and because my page is a mobile website things just don't look good. I'm trying to show a marine forecast for a specific area. Here is the link I'm trying to display.

Update...........

This is what I ended up using. Maybe it will help someone else. However I felt there was more than one right answer to my question.

<?php

$ch = curl_init("http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=29.26034686&lon=-91.46038359&unit=0&lg=english&FcstType=text&TextType=1");

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_BINARYTRANSFER, true);
$content = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
echo $content;

?>

I thought NOAA/NWS had a public API... – prodigitalson Feb 20 '13 at 02:18 — prodigitalson, Feb 20 '13 at 02:18

icanc · Answer 1 · 2013-03-05T14:22:57.020

1

Try using a user-agent as shown below. Then you can use simplexml to parse the contents and extract the text you want. For more info on simplexml.

$opts = array(
  'http'=>array(
    'method'=>"GET",
    'header'=>"User-agent: www.example.com"
  )
);

$content = file_get_contents($url, false, stream_context_create($opts));
$xml = simplexml_load_string($content);

edited Mar 05 '13 at 14:22

answered Feb 20 '13 at 02:16

icanc

3,499
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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 20 '13 at 03:10

This works as I think you want it to, except it depends on the same format from the weather site (also that "Outlook" is displayed).

<?php
//define the URL of the resource
$url = 'http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=29.26034686&lon=-91.46038359&unit=0&lg=english&FcstType=text&TextType=1';
//function from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5696412/get-substring-between-two-strings-php
function getInnerSubstring($string, $boundstring, $trimit=false)
{
    $res = false;
    $bstart = strpos($string, $boundstring);
    if($bstart >= 0)
    {
        $bend = strrpos($string, $boundstring);
        if($bend >= 0 && $bend > $bstart)
        {
            $res = substr($string, $bstart+strlen($boundstring), $bend-$bstart-strlen($boundstring));
        }
    }
    return $trimit ? trim($res) : $res;
}
//if the URL is reachable
if($source = file_get_contents($url))
{
    $raw = strip_tags($source,'<hr>');
    echo '<pre>'.substr(strstr(trim(getInnerSubstring($raw,"<hr>")),'Outlook'),7).'</pre>';
}
else{
    echo 'Error';
}
?>

If you need any revisions, please comment.

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 20 '13 at 02:11

0

You may use cURL for that. Have a Look at http://www.php.net/manual/en/book.curl.php

answered Feb 20 '13 at 02:11

Rob

1,158
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22

Pull text from another website

3 Answers3