PHP question (newbie)

btfans

As my Company block this ball result page, I (newbie) write this little php code try
to get the text(not graph) of the page and display using my server:

http://mylink.com/ballr1.php (code as bottom)

The problem is it show very good the first page but not the history data link
that can be enquired inside, because the url became
http://mylink.com/srchRes.asp?srchDate=1&fromD=24&fromM=11&fromY=2005&toD=25&toM=11&toY=2005&teamName=

which must be 404 url not found!

My question:
Any advise how the below code can be change such that I can actually get

http://bet.hkjc.com/football/en/results/srchRes.asp?srchDate=1&fromD=24&fromM=11&fromY=2005&toD=25&toM=11&toY=2005&teamName=
and the display on my server again ?? Many Thanks.

Understand that:
1) after balr1.php display the site html first time, the history data can be enquired by pressing the 'Search' button inside
but ballr1.php need intercept this button to form a link fist like:
http://mylink.com/ballr1.php?srchRes.asp?srchDate=1&fromD=24&fromM=11&fromY=2005&toD=25&toM=11&toY=2005&teamName=
but not just
http://mylink.com/srchRes.asp?srchDate=1&fromD=24&fromM=11&fromY=2005&toD=25&toM=11&toY=2005&teamName=
2) when the ballr1.php is invoked again with the variable parameters (from/to dates etc.), it need to do something
to change the base url to:
http://bet.hkjc.com/football/en/results/srchRes.asp?srchDate=1&fromD=24&fromM=11&fromY=2005&toD=25&toM=11&toY=2005&teamName=

I am really newbie to php, so appreciated anyone point me the solution code.

ballr1.php

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<title>Result</title>
</head>
<body>
Result
<hr><br>

<?
	$file = "http://bet.hkjc.com/football/en/results/results.aspx";
	$contents = file($file);
	$size = sizeof($contents);
	for($i = 0; $i < $size; $i++) {

$alldata = $contents[$i];
echo $alldata; }

?>
</body>
</html>

justsomeone

This is a long and complicated subject, and very dependant on the site whose content you are trying to display/copy/steal...

Check the html on the pages of the "ball" site (using view source). What do the links look like? Do they start with the URL of the "ball" site? Or do they just start with a filename "srchRes.asp" or "/srcRes.asp" etc...

If they don't specify the original domain, then you might be able to get away with something quick. In your loop where you output the contents of the page, you can just add in a html base href tag into the html.

<BASE href="http://bet.hkjc.com/">

(or whatever URL makes sense)

Any relative tags on the displayed page will then be treated as relative to this URL.

However, this will only work for very very simple sites. If the "ball" site needs to use cookies to work, then you have to get your server to pretend to process cookies like a real browser. And that's a lot of work to get right.

btfans

Hi,

The result page look like:

http://bet.hkjc.com/football/en/results/srchRes.asp?

Sorry how to modify in my code?

It's because the result link is correct, but will be blocked again !

http://bet.hkjc.com/football/en/results/srchRes.asp?srchDate=1&fromD=24&fromM=11&fromY=2005&toD=25&toM=11&toY=2005&teamName=

Please refer "Understand That:" section I added in my original post.

btfans

So any one can help on 'any code' I can used to view
the blocked ball pages with those from/to data enquiry
thru the 'Search' button ?

Many Thanks,

justsomeone

There is no easy answer to what you want to do.

You want to make a complete copy of someone else's site on the fly, and that's very difficult. I can offer you tips on some key areas, but it would take quite some time to write and test it, and I don't have the time.

In order to get the html, I would suggest using curl() rather than fread, as curl will return the various headers etc.

You will need to process those headers in order to set cookies etc. as the site you are accessing probably sets them ie you will need to read the headers, extract any cookies being set and store them locally. Then when you send the next curl request, you will need to send the cookie values in the request header.

In order to display the graphics you may need to do some regexp replacements of the html which you received from curl. You could write your own PHP script which will take as a parameter the url of an image, then it will read the image and display it. This means that you can now make the image appear from your site instead of from the original site.

In order to make any links work, you will need to do some more regexp replacements in so that any links or form submits on your page go back to your page (which will pass the request on to the original site), rather than going to the third party site directly.

This is a "man in the middle" system, and it takes a lot of work to build a good one.

Does your proxy allow you to access www.anonymizer.com? If so, you might find that they've done all the work for you. Just visit anonymizer and type the URL into their site and see how you go from there. If anonymizer is blocked, try googling for another similar service. I'm pretty sure there are others.

Weedpacket

Why do all these self-proclaimed newbies miss the Newbies forum? Just wondering whether it needs to be highlighted in some way.

justsomeone

How about including some logic on the "new thread" link which checks if the poster has previously started any threads? If not, they could be prompted for some keywords relating to their topic which would do a forum and google search for them. If they then click on "Nope, my question was not answered by any of the pages returned by these searches" then they get to open the new thread as normal?

Too unfriendly? Too formal?

Alternatively, your first thread could automagically be stored in newbies.

btfans

Weedpacket,

Appreciate your patient, I am newbie but I do not aware another newbie place...(as you said)....
My question related with php, so I try post in here.
Sometimes when I post this article in a 'newbie' column, but is asking php question, will
also be blamed....

Totally agreed justsomeone suggestion. And thank you.
I understand your point, but do not blame me as I really know little even 'regexp'....
Really sorry.
Will try to dig more from the php book.

justsomeone

Hi btfans,

Listen, forgive my rant earlier - I'm just having a hard day.

I hope you don't think I'm not being helpful, it's just that what you are looking for is a lot of work.

As far as the hkjc.com site is concerned, it has to think that it is being accessed directly by a normal user on a normal browser or things won't work as they have designed them.

We both know it won't be accessed by a normal user on a normal browser. It will be accessed by a script running on your site. So, this script has to do everything which a normal browser would do - specifically it has to accept any cookies which hkjc wants to send it, and it has to share those cookies with hkjc just the same as a normal browser would. Anthing less than that and hkjc might not be able to work as expected.

That's one side of the system.

The other side is that your program has to display all of the contents, and make sure that anyone clicking on anything on the webpage goes back to your script instead of straight to hkjc (which would be blocked by your proxy. This means that a link to http://www.hkjc.com/page.1html would need to be rewritten as something like http://www.yoursite.com/hkjcscript.php?page=/page1.html

Any references images would need to be redirected in the same way to something like http://www.yoursite.com/hkjcimage.php?img=/images/football.jpg which would request the image from hkjc and display it as if it was stored on your server.

Can you see how this is a big and complicated piece of work?

If you plan on sharing your system with friends, this is an extra complication. You will need to make sure that your script can keep track of which requests come from you and which come from your friend, and serve up the appropriate cookies with the request.

And the whole system could very likely fall apart if hkjc change their site layout.

This is a lot of work. For a PHP expert with experience in this kind of thing, I would guess it would take about 2 months working fulltime to develop it properly.

For an experienced PHP person who is new to url, page and cookie manipulation, I would estimate 3 months fulltime work.

For someone just starting out in PHP, I would not be surprised if it wasn't done after 6 months.

If you have a lot of time to devote to this, you have chosen a very interesting project and you will learn a lot. 🙂 I just need you to understand that it's not one of those cases where someone can just give you six lines of code to paste into your script to make it all work. As you get further into the development you will be able to ask more specific questions like:

"Here is the code I am using to set this cookie to this value, but it's giving me this error, what's the problem?"

"I have this line of html from a page I am trying to parse, I want to change this value to this value, I'm using this regular expression syntax to do it, but I'm getting this result instead of what I expect, what am I doing wrong?"

And when you get to that stage, you will find that your understanding of the problem is so much clearer, and you will find that you get much more specific answers from the good people here at PHPbuilder.

Weedpacket

btfans wrote:
Weedpacket,

Appreciate your patient, I am newbie but I do not aware another newbie place...(as you said)....
My question related with php, so I try post in here.
Sometimes when I post this article in a 'newbie' column, but is asking php question, will
also be blamed....

This is the forum I was talking about: it's PHPBuilder's forum for PHP newbies looking for help with PHP.

btfans

Justsomeone,

You are great helper and lead me understand a lot more...

Lucky, I still think the ball site did not much on cookie.

I do NOT need all .jpg etc, I only want to get the text (of the ball result)

For this may be more simple, I need (alternatively):

1) accept FORM for from/to dates in the ballr1.php
2) contruct same line to get and display the selected dates text data, as

http://bet.hkjc.com/football/en/results/srchRes.asp?srchDate=1&fromD=24&fromM=11&fromY=2005&toD=25&toM=11&toY=2005&teamName=

sorry, may I know this code can be done in several lines, if not, I will
try to dig out myself later.

Appreciate your patient as I'm rather newbie to php code.

btfans

Pls close it's resolved.