Retrieving images from a webpage's source

mlsbraves

I'm trying to create a script that displays an image from another one of my websites. I have a site that has user profiles with a picture of their car on it. On another site of mine I want to be able to type the users name and bring up the picture of the car.(e.g. mysite.com/membersname, this will bring up the profile.) The problem is the link to the images differ profile by profile. But they all start the same.

images.mysite.com/membersname/...filename.jpg

So the link always starts as images.mysite.com/membersname
The only way I can figure out how to make this work is to find a way that when it comes across the beginning of the link to wildcard the rest to display. Sorry if its hard to understand but I'm having troble explaing it. Basically, is there a way to search through the source of a page, and when it comes across "images.mysite.com/membersname" it can copy that line and be inserted into <img src="">

Any advice is appreciated

rehfeld

so you basically want to scan the html, find an img tag where the src=
starts w/ a certain string, and then grab that full url?


$membername = 'joe';
$pattern = '#src\s*=\s*(["\\'])?http://images.mysite.com/'.$membername.'/([^\s]*?)\\1#i';
preg_match($pattern, $subject, $matches);
print_r($matches);

mlsbraves

Not sure how to add this to my code and I'm still missing something here.

My first script is just a simple inputbox asking the name of the user:

<form name="cars" method="post" action="get.php">

Name of member: <input type="text" name="membersname" size="30"><br>

</tr></table>

<br><br>

<input type="submit" value="Get Info">

</form>

The action script should take the username and retrieve the image from the site: It will be the only link on the page that refers to images.mysite.com/users/could be anything from here
So far I have:

<? 

print ($membersname);

?>
<br><br><br>
<a href="http://mysite.com/<? echo ($membersname); ?>">[url]http://mysite.com/[/url]<? echo ($membersname); ?></a>
<br><br><br><br>
<--! I know from here the code just needs to go to the site, find where the link starts with "images.mysite.com/users" and that line can equal a value.!-->
<?
$pattern = '#src\s*=\s*(["\'])?[url]http://images.mysite.com/users/[/url]([^\s]*?)\\1#i';
preg_match($pattern, $subject, $matches);
print_r($matches); ?>
<br>
<? echo ($pattern) ?>

I know I have some values that are not defined in the code you wrote, but I am new at this and I hav'nt messed with php in a while. Hope someone can help me out a little her.

mlsbraves

Please someone help me. I searched google for screen scraping but couldn't find anything to help me.

rehfeld

$subject = file_get_contents('http://example.org/somepage.html');

mlsbraves

<? 

print ($membersname);

?>
<br><br><br>
<a href="http://mysite.com/<? echo ($membersname); ?>">[url]http://mysite.com/[/url]<? echo ($membersname); ?></a>
<br><br><br><br>
<?
$subject = file_get_contents('http://mysite.com/membername.html');
$pattern = '#src\s*=\s*(["\'])?[url]http://images.mysite.com/users/[/url]([^\s]*?)\\1#i';
preg_match($pattern, $subject, $matches);
print_r($matches); ?>

When it prints matches all it gives me is:
Array ( )

If I can just get the line with "images.mysite.com/users" in it, that would be the link.

dewen

make sure the image you need on 'http://mysite.com/membername.html' is in a format of

<img src="http//......">
absolute link, but not relative link as

mlsbraves

Yes it is in right format. I went ahead and broke it down to something simple and it still doesnt work. I get the same results with:

<?
$subject = "testing";
$pattern = "est";
preg_match($pattern, $subject, $matches);
print_r($matches); ?>

Just get Array ()

dewen

you need enclose the expression in delimiters

 
$pattern = "/est/";

can you post your 'http://mysite.com/membername.html' page so we know what you are trying to parse?

mlsbraves

I found out that this works:

<?php 
$subject = "Bla Bla Bla.....\n<br />\n<img src=\"http://images.mysite.com/users/some_image.jpg\" border=\"0\" />\n<br />"; 
$pattern = '#src\s*=\s*(["\'])?[url]http://images.mysite.com/users/[/url]([^"\']*?)\\1#i'; 
preg_match($pattern, $subject, $matches); 
echo "<pre>"; 
print_r($matches); 
echo "</pre>"; 
?>

But theres something wrong with "file_get_contents('http://mysite.com/membername.html');"

I can:

$subject = file_get_contents('http://mysite.com/membername.html');
echo $subject

I even set it to: file_get_contents('http://mysite.com/test.txt');
and test.txt has the same line:Bla Bla Bla.....\n<br />\n<img src=\"http://images.mysite.com/users/some_image.jpg\" border=\"0\" />\n<br />.

But I don't get anything. echo gives me nothing. It work when I put the $subject text in. But the same text in a file, can't get nothing. Whats going on?

rehfeld

you changed the regex pattern. for some reason you removed
([^\s]?)
and added this in its place
([^"']?)

try this

$pattern = '#src\s=\s(["\'])?http://images.mysite.com/users/([^\s]*?)\1#i';

the only thing i can think of why it doesnt work w/ file_get_contents is because you prob have escaped your quotes still in the txt file, which you do not need to do, and it will prevent the regex from matching.

mlsbraves

I added your code but same result. According to php.net

If you're opening a URI with special characters, such as spaces, you need to encode the URI with urlencode().

Do I need to add this somehow?