[RESOLVED] Need help extracting META infro from user submitted URL

sledgeweb

Hello.

I'm trying to extract the META Description and Keyword content from a user submitted URL to store in a table. For example, if a user submits "http://www.mysite.com", I want to read the META data from that page and store it into variables which I can use in a database query.

I've tried using the get_meta_tags function, as well as fopen to read the page contents, but I keep getting this error:

php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Name or service not known in

I understand this can be corrected by adding the URL to your HOST file, but this isn't practical in this case (since I'm working with a multitude of user submitted urls).

Can anyone help me figure out a way to pull the META content from a user submitted URL into variables?

Thanks,
Sledgeweb

bradgrafelman

Sounds like either a coding error, or a server configuration error. Show us the code you used, and an example URL you gave it.

sledgeweb

For the sake of debugging, I made a really simple script:

print_r(get_meta_tags('http://www.cnn.com'));

also tried things like:
$url = "www.cnn.com";
$tags = get_met_tags($url);
print_r($tags);

I've also tried fopen and file_get_contents, but always get the same error. I've tried multiple URLS, and multiple variations of calling the PHP functions.

bradgrafelman

So does the following give you that error message?

$test = file_get_contents('http://www.cnn.com');

If so, it's not a coding, but a server configuration problem. By server configuration, I don't just mean the php.conf file... there could be DNS or other problems on the server.

Just out of curiosity, if you do a phpinfo(), is http listed under 'Registered PHP Streams' (probably the last row of the very first table). Also, what is 'allow_url_fopen' set to?

Just in case it IS a DNS error, what does the following do?

$test = file_get_contents('http://64.236.16.52'); // cnn.com = 64.236.16.52

sledgeweb

I contacted my host, and they were able to adjust things to resolve the problem. I'm not exactly sure what they did, but this was their response:

"Server was having problems establishing tcp connection to our dns server. Its good now and wont go back to having problems though."

Seems to be working fine now.

bradgrafelman

Ah, I thought it would be a DNS issue.

Glad you got it resolved.