What do you call it? Get info from site A to site B

brainlag

I searched, but I'm not sure what I'm looking for is called. I'm trying to figure out how to get information from a remote website and have it posted on my website automatically. eg..

If a website updates tide information, I want to pull that information from that site and put it onto my website, but I also want it to update on my website, like every hour or so - automatically.

I have no idea what this is called, so searching for it is a little difficult. I know this must be the most basic question, but still, it alludes me.

I'm very new to PHP, so any help is greatly appreciated.

bpat1434

If the other site updates something, and you show it on your site, it is most likely an RSS Feed you are reading.

If you're using PHP to create your pages, why update every hour? Just call the information dynamically and each time the page reloads, the info will be grabbed.

~Brett

brainlag

I am wanting to get the information off the other site, but I haven't done it yet, because I don't know what that function is called and haven't been able to figure out what I should search for to get that script.

I'm nearly 100% certain that it's not RSS, because that would require the 'host' page to be running RSS? (I don't really know).

What I was thinking is that the script would look for a specific start string, like

 </i></p></td></tr><tr><td><a href="/show_plot.php?station=41004&amp;meas=wdir&amp;uom=E"><img alt="5-day plot - Wind Direction" src="/images/graph04.gif" border="0"></a></td><td>Wind Direction (WDIR):</td><td>

and then a close string like

 </td></tr>
<tr><td>

Then, it would take the information between those two strings, strip any HTML and display it on my page.

The frequency of the update doesn't really concern me as long as the max time is 1 hour. If it's easier to have it update every time, that would be splendid.

Heck, it might not even be possible, but I thought I would ask.

bpat1434

I think you're talking about something like the Firefox plugin for the DoHS Threat Level.

Basically, just use fopen() to open the page, fread() or file_get_contents() to get the contents, then fclose() to close the connection.

Then just use str_replace or eregi_replace to strip HTML tags from the contents that were read, and display it on your page.

Here's the DoHS example:

<?php
$fp = fopen("www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/getAdvisoryCondition");
$level = file_get_contents($fp);
fclose($fp);

$html = array('<?xml', 'version=', 'encoding="UTF-8"', '?>', '<', '/>');
eregi_replace($html, "", $level);
// This should give us the following:
/* 1.0 THREAT_ADVISORY CONDITION="ELEVATED"
*/
// Break it up on the spaces
$level = explode(" ", $level);

// $level[0] = "1.0"
// $level[1] = "THREAT_ADVISORY"
// $level[2] = "CONDITION="ELEVATED""

$clevel = eregi_replace('"', " ", $level[2]);

// $clevel[1] = "ELEVATED";
echo $clevel[1];
?>

~Brett

brainlag

That helped a lot! Now I am pointing in the right direction. I found a script that will pull info from another site, I now have to figure out how to incorporate it into what I need.

Thanks!