Using PHP to read SITEMETER's "Who's online" - Possible??

[camarosource]

I use www.sitemeter.com SiteMeter website meter for years now and had an idea which apparently David Smith (Sitemeter's Inventor) says IS in fact possible. However I really have no idea how this would be done and so I was hoping someone here could help?

I would like to find out how to write a PHP script that would be able to read Sitemeter's "who's online" amount and display it on my website.

For example: Let's say if I went into sitemeter (http://www.sitemeter.com/default.asp?action=samplestats&site=sm5sitefreestuff&report=15) and it showed 24 people online. I would like the PHP script to see there is 24 listed and display "24" on the website.

Thanks.

[rehfeld]

its not very difficult

grab the file into a string, either using fopen() or file_get_contents()
(you can use both of those funcs on urls, not just files, that is unless you host has disabled url wrappers)

then you just parse the string.

you may be able to use a combination of strpos() and substr(), but most likely you will want to use regular expressions to parse it out.

this is known as "screen scraping", google for it

if you want to provide a snip of the html source surrounding the value you wish to retrieive, im sure we could help you out w/ the regex.

[camarosource]

I posted the question on a msgboard and someone told me about SNOOPY and wrote a small script that would read www.sitemeter.com 's who's online list and dislplay the number of people using your SNOOPY.

This is the small files he wrote:

[WHOISONLINE.PHP]

<?php
include ("snoopy.class.php");
$url = "http://www.sitemeter.com/default.asp?action=stats&site=sm4camarosource&report=15";
$online_count = 0;
// Create a new instance of the Snoopy Class.
$snoopy = new Snoopy;
  // Fetch all the links from the desired website.
   $snoopy->fetchlinks($url); // Fetch all the links from the given URI.
  // Now we will sift through all the links to find just the one we need.
  $haystack = $snoopy->results; // This is an array containing all the links from fetchlinks.
  reset($haystack); 
  while (list($key, $val) = each($haystack)) 
  { 
 if (stristr($val,"&visit="))
 {
   $online_count++;
 } 
  } 
//display info
echo "Users online : $online_count";
?>

I placed it (and ALL the snoopy files) into the http://camarosource.ca/php/snoopy/

http://camarosource.ca/php/snoopy/whoisonine.php

But when you run it, it says "Users online : 0"

Obviously it is not reading the who's online list. I am guessing it is perhaps because you have to log INTO sitemeter? If this is the case, how would I make it so it logs in? In order to log into your Sitemeter account to see your site's stats, you have to enter your username and password.

Please help.

Thanks a LOT! :-)

[connected]

Obviously it is not reading the who's online list. I am guessing it is perhaps because you have to log INTO sitemeter? If this is the case, how would I make it so it logs in? In order to log into your Sitemeter account to see your site's stats, you have to enter your username and password.

CXV. Stream Functions

Example 2. Making a POST request to an https server

<?php
/* Send POST request to [url]https://secure.example.com/form_action.php[/url]
 * Include form elements named "foo" and "bar" with dummy values
 */

$sock = fsockopen("ssl://secure.example.com", 443, $errno, $errstr, 30);
if (!$sock) die("$errstr ($errno)\n");

$data = "foo=" . urlencode("Value for Foo") . "&bar=" . urlencode("Value for Bar");

fwrite($sock, "POST /form_action.php HTTP/1.0\r\n");
fwrite($sock, "Host: secure.example.com\r\n");
fwrite($sock, "Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n");
fwrite($sock, "Content-length: " . strlen($data) . "\r\n");
fwrite($sock, "Accept: */*\r\n");
fwrite($sock, "\r\n");
fwrite($sock, "$data\r\n");
fwrite($sock, "\r\n");

$headers = "";
while ($str = trim(fgets($sock, 4096)))
  $headers .= "$str\n";

echo "\n";

$body = "";
while (!feof($sock))
  $body .= fgets($sock, 4096);

fclose($sock);
?>

Someone who is not about to fall unconscious please elaborate on this.