Read text only off of web page

Anon

I'd like to be able to load the contents of a page into a variable, but I just want the text off of the page, not all of the HTML code. In other words, I'd like the variable to reflect what lynx would see, or what you'd see if you copied the text off of the page into notepad. I want to be able to do some other stuff with the text on the page, and I don't need or want all of the HTML tags. Is this possible? This is the code I'm using thus far.

$myfile = "http://mywebsite.com/php/file.htm";
$first_page = @implode("",file($myfile));

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Anon

use the stripslashes() function. or is it strip_slashes()? i always forget...

-paul
http://xhawk.net

Anon

I would advise strip_tags() function :-) to get rid of all tags. But! It leaves all text inside comments and inside scripts, so before using it I remove texts in comments and between <script> and </script> tags with str_replace. I was advised to use ereg_replace() for that but I did not manage it.

Anon

hrm... yeah, strip_tags is what i meant... must have been up too late again...

:-P

i think there is actually an example of removing the contents of script tags in the php manual... try this:
$string = eregi_replace("<script>(.|[[:space:]])*</script>", "", $string);
that might work. still, check the manual...

-paul

frymaster

you actually mentioned the best tool for the job... lynx!

popen("lynx -dump http://myurl", $result)

should do the job... mind you i haven't tested it or anything, but it really feels like it should work.