How to return (print) content of URL?

michaelnorth

Greetings all!

The PHP search engine I'm using normally returns a URL with a description, but I want to return (display) the actual content of the URL instead.

This is the include statement that now returns a single URL . . .

<?php include "http://www.1-divorce.com/search-articles/search.php?name=articles&results_per_page=1&query=good+lawyer" ?>

You can run it at [URL=http://]http://www.1-divorce.com/search-articles/search.php?name=articles&results_per_page=1&query=good+lawyer[/URL] and see that it returns only the desired URL. That's fine, but how can I actually display the contents of good-lawyer.txt within a web page?

Your help is much appreciated. I'm a humble web designer, not a divorce lawyer! 😉

HalfaBee

You need to include
http://www.1-divorce.com/articles/good-lawyer.txt

If you are including this on a different site you should get the other sites permission and put the file on your own server.

HalfaBee

michaelnorth

HalfaBee,

I'm familiar with the include statement, but that's not really the problem . . . you see, the search engine will return the single best match from any of several hundred URL's pointing to articles. So, there is no way to hard-code an include statement for a specific result like "http://www.1-divorce.com/articles/good-lawyer.txt"

The solution must read the URL generated by the engine for each search, then open and display the content referenced by that URL within the page. I understand that fopen() might be used for this purpose, but I don't know how to put the script together.

By the way, permission is not a problem here, I'm developing this site for a client and searchs are only done on his copyrighted material.

HalfaBee

You can do this

ob_start();
include "http://www.1-divorce.com/search-articles/search.php?name=articles&results_per_page=1&query=good+lawyer";
$s = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
$s = trim( $s );
include "$s";

This works.

HalfaBee

michaelnorth

I'm very new to this, so I have just a glimmer of an idea of what you just sent me . . . but when I drop into the page as below, I get an "failed opening" error on the last line of code. I double-checked the query and the URL generated by the query -- they are both valid.

<?php ob_start(); 
include "http://www.1-divorce.com/search-articles/search.php?name=articles&results_per_page=1&query=good+lawyer"; 
$s = ob_get_contents(); 
ob_end_clean(); 
include "$s"; ?>

Weedpacket

But why, when [man]fopen[/man], [man]fread[/man], [man]file[/man] and most of the other file functions can be given URLs as well as filenames?

HalfaBee

It needed the trim( $s ) to make it work.
The newline was causing the problem.

HalfaBee

michaelnorth

I'm not clear on the syntax of "trim" -- could you repost the entire block of code so I can see specifically how it fits togther? Then, I give it a try. Thanks.

HalfaBee

ob_start();
include "http://www.1-divorce.com/search-articles/search.php?name=articles&results_per_page=1&query=good+lawyer";
$s = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
$s = trim( $s );
include "$s";

HalfaBee

A cleaner way would be this

$s = trim( file_get_contents( ""http://www.1-divorce.com/search-articles/search.php?name=articles&results_per_page=1&query=good+lawyer" ) );
include( $s );

HalfaBee

michaelnorth

HalfaBee -- I'm impressed, it works! Only one wrinkle . . . can you hang in with me to figure this last part out?

Your solution works fine when the search engine finds something relevant and returns a proper URL, but if it doesn't find a match in its index, it generates a null, which in turns generates this error in your script . . . perfectly understandable.

Warning: Failed opening '' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/.xcell/cadivorc/1-divorce.com/body.bak1.php on line 57

So in case of a null result, I'd like your script to substitute the code below instead, which will swap-in a randomly chosen article. Can you help me with this?

<?php include ("ad_rotator.php");?>

HalfaBee

$s = trim( file_get_contents( "http://www.1-divorce.com/search-articles/search.php?name=articles&results_per_page=1&query=good+lawyer" ) );
if( $s!="" )
    include( $s );
else
    include ("ad_rotator.php");

HalfaBee

michaelnorth

Hmmm . . .

Your last post has got to be close, but I get this error . . .

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: file_get_contents() in /home/.xcell/cadivorc/1-divorce.com/body.bak1.php on line 63

HalfaBee

Your host must not have the 4.3 version of PHP.
You will have to use the other code I posted.

HalfaBee

Weedpacket

That's because [man]file_get_contents[/man] was introduced in PHP4.3; you must be running something older.

michaelnorth

Yes, I'm sure that's it . . . this particular ISP must be a little behind the game.