CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phphtml-parsingfile-get-contents
skornos
skornos

Reputation: 3281

PHP file_get_contents returns just newlines

I have just a PHP script for HTML parsing and it works on simple web sites, but now I need to parse the cinema program from this website. I am using the file_get_contents function, which returns just 4 new line delimiters \n and I just can't figure out why. The website itself will be more difficult to parse with DOMDocument a XPath because the program itself is just pop-up window and it doesn't seem to change the URL address but I will try to handle this problem after retrieving the HTML code of the site.

Here is the shortened version of my script:

<?php
      $url = "http://www.cinemacity.cz/";
      $content = file_get_contents($url);
      $dom = new DomDocument;
      $dom->loadHTML($content);

      if ($dom == FALSE) {
        echo "FAAAAIL\n";
      }

      $xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);

      $tags = $xpath->query("/html");

      foreach ($tags as $tag) {
        var_dump(trim($tag->nodeValue));
      }
?>

EDIT:

So, following the advice by WBAR (thank you), I was looking for a way how to change the header in file_get_contents() function a this is the answer I've found elsewhere. Now I am able to obtain the HTML of the site, hopefully I will manage parsing of this mess :D

<?php
    libxml_use_internal_errors(true);
    // Create a stream
    $opts = array(
      'http'=>array(
        'user_agent' => 'PHP libxml agent', //Wget 1.13.4
        'method'=>"GET",
        'header'=>"Accept-language: en\r\n" .
                  "Cookie: foo=bar\r\n"
      )
    );
    $context = stream_context_create($opts);

    // Open the file using the HTTP headers set above
    $content = file_get_contents('http://www.cinemacity.cz/', false, $context);

    $dom = new DomDocument;
    $dom->loadHTML($content);

    if ($dom == FALSE) {
        echo "FAAAAIL\n";
    }

    $xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);

    $tags = $xpath->query("/html");

    foreach ($tags as $tag) {
        var_dump(trim($tag->nodeValue));
    }
?>

Upvotes: 1

Views: 871

Answers (2)

WBAR
WBAR

Reputation: 4984

The problem is not in PHP but in target host. It detects client's User-Agent header. Look at this:

wget http://www.cinemacity.cz/
2012-10-07 13:54:39 (1,44 MB/s) - saved `index.html.1' [234908]

but when remove User-Agent headers:

wget --user-agent="" http://www.cinemacity.cz/
2012-10-07 13:55:41 (262 KB/s) - saved `index.html.2' [4/4]

Only 4 bytes were returned by the server

Upvotes: 4

Thomas Anderson
Thomas Anderson

Reputation: 38

Try to get the contents this way:

  function get2url($url, $timeout = 30, $port = 80, $buffer = 128) {
    $arr = parse_url($url);
    if(count($arr) < 3) return "URL ERROR";

    $ssl = "";
    if($arr['scheme'] == "https") $ssl = "ssl://";

    $header  = "GET " . $arr['path'] . "?" . $arr['query'] . " HTTP/1.0\r\n";
    $header .= "Host: " . $arr['host'] . "\r\n";
    $header .= "\r\n";

    $f = @fsockopen($ssl . $arr['host'], $port, $errno, $errstr, $timeout);

    if(!$f)
      return $errstr . " (" . $errno . ")";

    else{
      @fputs($f, $header . $arr['query']);

      $echo = "";
      while(!feof($f)) { $echo .= @fgets($f, $buffer); }

      @fclose($f);

      return $echo;
    }
  }

You will have to remove the headers though.

Upvotes: 0

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