Reading an external file

[reeksy]

Hi.

I’m stuck with this!

I’m trying to get a value from a link from an external source. I can return the whole page using the following:

file_get_contents("http://www.example.com/the_file.asp")

But I want to search the contents, find a specific part and then use just that line.

Is this possible? If so, how should I go about it?!

Jon

[moracom]

I think that only way to do this by using XML and the external source needs to provide the information on XML code for you to retrieve it.

[reeksy]

There's one line that i'm looking for - i wont always know the line number but i know the text value of something on that line.

Is it not possible to search the file for that instance?

[moracom]

Like i said, only if it is on XML format

[Weedpacket]

reeksy wrote:

Is it not possible to search the file for that instance?

It certainly is possible. Whatever it is, it can go in a string (or an array of strings, one per line). Then you can use any of the [man]string[/man] functions on that string.

It's just a pain because HTML is an ugly thing to dig through with string functions. If you've got the [man]DOM[/man] extension you could attempt to construct a document model and then walking through that. Then you can sit back and hope the layout of the page doesn't change because it would throw all your work out the window.

Typically, these days, if a site's owner wants their material to be available for machine use, they'll also be supplying it in XML or other some other more easily-parsed format.