HTML Parse help

Anon

I need to be able to load URL using regex and then just extract one word from that page, and 4 characters before and it 4 characters after.

e.g take for example phpbuilder.com - there is a headline which is 'Graphing With PHP and GD' - i want to be able to grab just the lets say 'ing With PHP' and display it on a page i have created.

Any ideas? sample code?

Thanks

Darren

Anon

OK, I tested it and it works. If you know what your looking for, do this:

<?php
$string = "Graphing With PHP and GD";
if ( ereg( "ing", $string, $regs )) {
echo $regs[0];
}
?>

this will print "ing" when you run it.

Anon

You will need to learn how to use Regular Expressions in order to learn this. The scope of this can be very large. I would suggest you do some research on the topic. You can use the file() function to grab the page as an array and then use the implode() function to glue the pieces together and then do perform a regular expression on the string that is returned by implode().
For example:

//URL to parse
$url = 'http://www.phpbuilder.com';
//Regular expression to match the title of a document
$title = '(<title>)([a-zA-Z_0-9@!%-;&`,\'+\$.\n\t\r ]+)';

//Use file() function to "grab" the page as an array
$file = @file( $url, "r" );

//Use the implode function to glue the pieces of the array together using the \n(newline) character
$target = @implode( "\n", $file);

//Use regular expression to return matches
eregi($title, $target, $match);

//This will return the title of the document
echo "$match[2]";

//As a note $match[0] will return the entire string matched and $match[1] will return the first section of the string matched(<title>), $match[2] will return the second section of the matched string. Which is what we want in this case.

Anon

just one thing to add to that, if you want four characters either side of a specific word your match string might look like:

(.{4}word.{4})

--
rad

Anon

Brian, you've helped me a ton! I'm wondering if you (or someone) can help me some more... There's a web page that contains this section of html:

		one:{
			title:"Handcuffed To A Fence In Miss.",

artist:"Jim White",
album:"No Such Place",
time:"4:07",
url:"",
filename:"Jim White - Handcuffed To A Fence In Mississippi",
trackType:"user",
visualURL:""

		},
		two:{
			title:"Untidy Towns",

artist:"Lucksmiths",
album:"Happy Secret",
time:"2:55",
url:"",
filename:"Lucksmiths Untidy Towns",
trackType:"user",
visualURL:""

		},
		three:{
			title:"Monkberry Moon Delight",

artist:"Paul McCartney",
album:"Ram",
time:"5:28",
url:"",
filename:"paul mccartney - monkberry moon delight",
trackType:"user",
visualURL:""

By using your method described above, I was able to successfully extract the info I needed for Track One. Here is my code:

<?php

//URL to parse
$url = 'http://www.live365.com/pls/front?handler=playlist&cmd=view&handle=glono&site=..';

//Regular expression to match the title of a document
$title = '(title:")([a-zA-Z_0-9@!%-;&,\'\+\$\.\n\t\r ]+)'; $artist = '(artist:")([a-zA-Z_0-9@!%-;&,\'+\$.\n\t\r ]+)';
$album = '(album:")([a-zA-Z_0-9@!%-;&,\'\+\$\.\n\t\r ]+)'; $time = '(time:")([a-zA-Z_0-9@!%-;&,\'+\$.\n\t\r ]+)';

//Use file() function to "grab" the page as an array
$file = @file( $url, "r" );

//Use the implode function to glue the pieces of the array together using the \n(newline) character
$target = @implode( "\n", $file);

//Use regular expression to return matches
eregi($title, $target, $match);

//This will return the title of the document
$title1 = "$match[2]";

eregi($artist, $target, $match);
$artist1 = "$match[2]";

eregi($album, $target, $match);
$album1 = "$match[2]";

eregi($time, $target, $match);
$time1 = "$match[2]";

?>
<h3>Currently playing...</h3>
<p><? echo $artist1 ; ?> - "<? echo $title1; ?>" [<? echo $time1; ?>] - <i><? echo $album1 ; ?></i></p>

It works great. See http://www.gloriousnoise.com/scripts/testradio.php to see it in action. Now I'm wondering how to get at the data for Tracks Two and Three. Any ideas?