PHP Grep

sgray

Hi Guys,

I'm wishing to write a PHP script that parses an RSS feed on a local travel agent website, and emails me whenever there are deals to/from particular destinations. Downloading the RSS file seems easy enough, looks like I can use Preg_Grep to find the destinations I'm after and assign the values to an array. The bit I'm stuck with is how I write an IF statement that says, if any of the values within the array equal <destination> echo "There are flights to <destination>". I'll get it to email me the results but an echo will be fine for now.

Secondly, is there anyway to get a server to execute a PHP script server side? or should I be writing this in BASH to begin with? I don't particularly want to have to visit my PHP file each day for the check to be performed. a crontab or something would be ideal.

Any help appreciated,

Thanks

Clooth

http://tips-scripts.com/?tip=cron_basics

sgray

Thanks Clooth, I've used crontab heaps but didn't realise you could execute a PHP file using the executable itself, assumed it had to be through apache or something!

So far my code is:

<?php
$file = 'http://domain.com/rss.xml';
$data = file($file) or die('Could not read file!');
$exploded = explode(" ",$data);
if (in_array("London", $exploded)) {
echo "Trips to London";}
else {
echo "no trips to london";}
?>

It's reading the file OK but I dont think I have the manipulation right just yet. I wish I had sed for linux, in PHP 🙂

NogDog

A simple solution you might try as a starting point:

$file = 'http://domain.com/rss.xml';
$data = file($file) or die('Could not read file!');
$matches = preg_grep('/London/i', $data);
if(count($matches))
{
  // found trips to London, loop through array $matches for details
}
else
{
  // no matches found for London
}