Pulling variables from a remote page?

[kolanos]

Say I wanted to pull player details from this page:
http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/players/profile?statsId=333

What would be an easy way to do it? Which functions should I look into using?

Variables I want to pull from the page would include: player name, player number, height, weight, age, position, etc. I also want to be able to pull statistics, and since there may be many years of statistics I want the script to be able to parse each year into an array.

Any tips? Links that may be of assistance? Code examples?

TIA.

[Shrike]

[MAN]cURL[/man] perhaps? Or write some regexp to grab the parts you want (not very reliable). Of course you have the website owners permission right? 🙂

[kolanos]

Originally posted by Shrike
[MAN]cURL[/man] perhaps? Or write some regexp to grab the parts you want (not very reliable). Of course you have the website owners permission right? 🙂

Does curl have any parsing capabilities? Any examples of this anywhere?

As for site permissions, it's more for personal use. Just looking for more technique advice, the link is just an example.

[kolanos]

Ok, I've got this sort of working, here's what I have so far:

	
$hostname = "xxx";
$username = "xxx";
$password = "xxx";
$dbName = "xxx";

$i = 1;
$count = 10;

while ($i < $count) {

$data = file_get_contents('http://$site?player_id=' . $i);

if (!ereg("(does not currently exist)", $data)) {

	preg_match("/<p class=\'playername\'>&nbsp;&nbsp;(.*) <span/Uis", $data, $playername); 

	preg_match("/<span class=\'playerposition\'>&nbsp;&nbsp;#(.*)<\/span>/Uis", $data, $numpos);

	$numpos2 = explode(" ", $numpos[1]);

	preg_match("/<b>DOB:<\/b> (.*)<\/td><\/tr>/Uis", $data, $dob); 

	preg_match("/<b>Place of Birth:<\/b> (.*)<\/td><\/tr>/Uis", $data, $pob); 

	preg_match("/<b>HT:<\/b> (.*) <b>/Uis", $data, $height); 

	preg_match("/<b>WT:<\/b> (.*)<\/td>/Uis", $data, $weight); 

	preg_match("/<b>Shoots: <\/b>(.*)<\/td>/Uis", $data, $shoots); 

	preg_match("/Drafted by (.*)\.<\/td>/Uis", $data, $drafted); 

	MYSQL_CONNECT($hostname,$username,$password) OR DIE("can't connect to database");
	@mysql_select_db($dbName) or die("can't select database");

	$query = "INSERT INTO players (name,no,pos,dob,pob,height,weight,shoots,drafted) VALUES ('$playername[1]','$numpos2[0]','$numpos2[1]','$dob[1]','$pob[1]','$height[1]','$weight[1]','$shoots[1]','$drafted[1]');";
	MYSQL_QUERY($query);

	MYSQL_CLOSE();
}
$i++;
}

The problem is, when I run it I frequenlty get the following error and I can only run through 5-10 player IDs or else I will get this error all the time:

Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in xxx.php on line 13

How can I keep this script from timing out all the time?

TIA.