Read a site for a string? [Novice]

[Anon]

I know, I know, this is going to be a really easy thing to do, but I am a big novice on Php.

What would the code be for a php script to read from another page, find a line on that page (There are currently # monkeys in the tree), and then print that number? I really don't know what you call this, and I tried seraching :-/... IE:

www.mysite.com
read from www.thissite.com
Find (There are currently ### monkeys in the tree)
Print on www.mysite.com "According to www.thissite.com, there are ### monkeys in the frekin tree!)

Thanks in advance.

[van__]

<?
preg_match_all('/.([0-9][^{\s]+)\s+monkies+.*/is',$page,$numMonkies);}

print_r($numMonkies[1]);
?>

[majik-sheff]

Here's a complete function and an example of how to use it. Good luck 🙂

<?PHP
$page = "http://www.thissite.com/"; //The http:// is important
$preText = "There are currently "; //set the string that prefixes what you are looking for (even the space)
$postText = " monkeys in the tree"; //set the string that follow what you are looking for

$numberOfMonkeys = find_string_on_page($page, $preText, $postText); //use the find_string_on_page function
echo "According to $page, there are $numberOfMonkeys in the freakin tree!"; //spit out a result

//This is a general purpose function that returns a string from a website or file
function find_string_on_page($page, $preText, $postText) {
$fp = fopen($page, "r");
while (!feof ($fp)) {
$pageContents .= fgets($fp, 1024);
}
fclose($fp);
$start = strpos($pageContents, $preText) + strlen($preText);
$length = strpos($pageContents, $postText, $start) - $start;
return(substr($pageContents, $start, $length));
}
?>

[van__]

Don't think that is quite versitile enough.

What happens if it's "monkies in a tree"

Regex is far more powerful.
I did notice I should have tested mine before I handed it to him, it had a slight problem, but this can find any reference to a number of monkies for as many times as it appears anywhere...

<?
//you can combine pages...
$page = "There are 12 monkies hangin in the tree.\n";
$page .= "There are 42 monkies hangin in the tree.\n";
$page .= "There are 23 monkies hangin in the tree.\n";

//just run this one line of code...
preg_match_all('/([0-9]*[^{\s]+)\s+monkies+/i',$page,$numMonkies);}
// $numMonkies[1] is now an array containing all the monkies by tree.

//and you can loop for nice output...
foreach($numMonkies[1] as $key=>$number) {
echo "$number damn monkies in dat tree!<br>";
$total += $number;
}

echo "<p>Lookie dere... Dere be a $total monkies in " . count(array_keys($numMonkies[1])) . " damn trees!</p>";

?>

Point is, regex can parse pages faster and more effeciently than a bunch or substr() functions chained together.
With one line of code I created a far more powerfull feature than your entire string parsing function.

[Anon]

Thanks SO much!

hug

[majik-sheff]

Let me just go pick up the shattered pieces of my ego... 😛 Seriously though, that is a better approach.