CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phphtmlvariablespostget
Brian Sargent
Brian Sargent

Reputation: 89

grab a variable value from external webpage for processing?

Let me just start by saying I know almost nothing about PHP but, I think that may prove to be the best way to do what I'm trying to do. I'd like to grab the value of a variable from an external page so that I can then process it for the creation of graphs and statistics on my page. An example page that I'm trying to get the variable from (requires a Facebook Account) is - http://superherocity.klicknation.com/game/pages/battle_replay.php?battle=857337182

The variable name is fvars and it contains data about what the 2 players used for attacks, how much damage they did, etc. Ultimately what I'd like is to provide a page with a form where a player can go and plug in their replay link (like above) and get a nice neat detailed breakdown of the battle.

At the very least, if someone could explain to me how to just echo out the value of fvars after a form submission with the replay url as input it would help out immensely!!! I've tried looking at some PHP references and other posts here but, have so far been lost. :(

Thank you for any help or guidance.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 3195

Answers (2)

dmikester1
dmikester1

Reputation: 1370

You can get the contents of any webpage like so:

$homepage = file_get_contents('http://www.example.com/');
echo $homepage;

And then just use regex or basic searching to find the variable you need in $homepage. The problem is that you need to be logged in via Facebook. I know of no current way to do this dynamically with PHP. Mike

Edit: found an SO question that addresses this exact issue - Scraping from a website that requires a login?

Upvotes: 1

Oli
Oli

Reputation: 1190

One way you could approach it is to use Selenium. You would need to setup the selenium server and a browser and then write a selenium script to fetch the page for you. The key point here is that selenium can run a firefox client with javascripts, facebook logins etc, everything you have on your ordinary firefox, through selenium programmatically.

I run selenium in a Linux environment and control it through php cli scripts. I run the java selenium-server-standalone along with framebuffered X and firefox. PHP Unit test library allready has an extension though you wouldn't need it for testing obviously.

Upvotes: 2

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