Parsing problem

[BRUm]

Hi,

I'm building a search engine, and so far it's going well, www.xwebhost.co.uk/nero.php many people have submitted sites and they can search freely. However, I need to expand, so I'm looking to build a spider or a script to parse html links from websites, then look within in them for links etc...

I've drawn up an exmaple from a site:

  $input = file_get_contents("http://www.xwebhost.co.uk");
  $regexp = "<a\s[^>]*href=(\"??)([^\" >]*?)\\1[^>]*>(.*)<\/a>";
  if(preg_match_all("/$regexp/siU", $input, $matches)) {
    # $matches[2] = array of link addresses
    # $matches[3] = array of link text - including HTML code
  }

Could someone tell me where the links are kept? They're not displayed and I need ultimately for the links to be found, then added to my db with keywords. I've tried echoing the arrays but it doesn't work, just returns with "array".

thanks.

[Weedpacket]

[man]print_r[/man] would be a better way of examining the content of arrays.

[BRUm]

ok I've figured it out, i didn't need to use print, so far the script displays all links and the first URLs meta tags. But, how can I pick out a link from the array so then the script can search within that link and so on. It needs to be an on going spider.

Also, I've stuck at the last part of my code with shuffle :S could someone tell me why i can an error: Warning: shuffle() expects parameter 1 to be array, string given in C:\Inetpub\vhosts*httpdocs\get.php on line 51

<?php
$username="*";
$password="*";
$database="*_";

mysql_connect(localhost,$username,$password);

@mysql_select_db($database) or die( "Unable to select database");


  $input = file_get_contents("http://www.ebay.co.uk");
  $regexp = "<a\s[^>]*href=(\"??)([^\" >]*?)\\1[^>]*>(.*)<\/a>";
  if(preg_match_all("/$regexp/siU", $input, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER)) {
    foreach($matches as $match) {
      ?>
      <br><br>
      <?php
      echo $match[2]; 
      #echo $match[3]; 
    }
  #New un
?><br><br>
<?php
$input2 = file_get_contents("http://www.ebay.co.uk");
  $regexp2 = "<META NAME=[^>]*CONTENT=(\"??)([^\">]*?)\\1[^>]*>";
  if(preg_match_all("/$regexp2/siU", $input2, $matches2, PREG_SET_ORDER)) {
    foreach($matches2 as $matchh) {
      echo $matchh[2]; 
      #echo $match[3]; 
       $query = "INSERT INTO nero VALUES ('Ebay','$match[2]','$matchh[2]')";
    mysql_query($query);
    }
  }


 }
while($i < 100)
{
?><br><br>
<?php
$input = file_get_contents("$match[2]");
  $regexp = "<a\s[^>]*href=(\"??)([^\" >]*?)\\1[^>]*>(.*)<\/a>";
  if(preg_match_all("/$regexp/siU", $input, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER)) {
    foreach($matches as $match) {
      echo $match[2]; 
      #echo $match[3]; 
    }
  }
shuffle($match);
//get the first index
$match = $match[0];
$i = $i + 1;
}
?>

thanks.