need help with curl class

[tracyjb]

can someone please explain what is required to use this class?

do I need a script that "requires" the class and sets the variables?

(I'm not a fluent PHP coder but I am somewhat familiar)

TIA

<?php
/*******************************************************************************
*                                  grabber.php
*                              by voyager, 2003
*
* A class which is usefull for grabbing any information of any site over the net.
* It can retusrn a single value (text) or an array (texts) with given 'markup' 
* strings. The class uses PHP CURL functions so you need CULR installed on your
* server
********************************************************************************/

class Grabber
{
   var $content;
   var $content_array;
   var $noURL; //this is the boolean which will mark if to open the URL or not
   var $text; //the text without starting and ending unneeded parts
   var $searchar; // the searched array
   var $searchtxt; //the searched text

   // The constructor opens an URL and writes it in give file and dir
   // if 4th argument is given it check if this file exists already 
   // when is the last modification and if it is older, opens the URL,
   // else opens the file. If $ifmod=0 it always opens the URL
   //it defaults to 24 hours
   function Grabber($url,$tmpdir='tmp/',$tmpfile='tmp.txt',$ifmod=86400)
   {
         $this->content="";      	     	     	     

         $ch = curl_init ();                   

         curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
	     curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);		    

	     curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 60);	
	     $useragent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040206 Firefox/0.8";	    	     

	     curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_USERAGENT,$useragent);
	     $this->content = curl_exec ($ch);     

	     curl_close ($ch);         

   }   

   //this grabs only a piece of text
   function grab_unit($start,$end)
   {
       //cut from start to end
      $this->text=substr($this->content,strpos($this->content,$start)+strlen($start)+1);
      $this->text=substr($this->text,0,strpos($this->text,$end));
      $this->searchtxt=$this->text;
   }


   //it gets start delimeter, end delimeter and an array of pieces to
   //put out. Returns the array of needed infomation
   //delimstart and delimend are arround the pieces of searched data
   function grab_array($start,$delimstart,$delimend,$end)
   {
      //cut from start to end
      $this->text=substr($this->content,strpos($this->content,$start)+strlen($start)+1);
      $this->text=substr($this->text,0,strpos($this->text,$end));

  //getting out the unndeeded and pushing into the array
  $this->searchar=preg_split("@$delimstart|$delimend@",$this->text);
   }

   //the elemnts of the array arent still what we need?
   function refine_array($start,$end,$clear_html=0)
   {
      for($i=0;$i<sizeof($this->searchar);$i++)
      {
         $this->searchar[$i]=substr($this->searchar[$i],
	     strpos($this->searchar[$i],$start)+strlen($start));

 if(!empty($end))
 {
    $this->searchar[$i]=substr($this->searchar[$i],
       0,strpos($this->searchar[$i],$end));    
 }

     if($clear_html)
 {
    $this->searchar[$i]=strip_tags($this->searchar[$i]);
 }
  }
   }

   //You still have some unregular data which makes everything bad?
   // REmove the trash, giving an array of it
   function remove_trash($trash)
   {
      for($i=0;$i<sizeof($trash);$i++)
      {
         for($j=0;$j<sizeof($this->searchar);$j++)
	 {
	    $this->searchar[$j]=str_replace($trash[$i],"",$this->searchar[$j]);
	 }

 $this->searchtxt=str_replace($trash[$i],"",$this->searchtxt);
  }
   }

  //this function does not work with the members of the grabber.
   //it just takes start and end limits and the content - $word
   // to return whats inside. You can easy debug it with giving 1 to testvar
   function cut($start,$end,$word,$testvar=0)
   {
		$word=substr($word,strpos($word,$start)+strlen($start));
		if($testvar) die($word);
		$word=substr($word,0,strpos($word,$end));

	return $word;
   }


   function send_post($vars, $url)
	{
		$strRequestBody = ""; 
		while (list($key, $val) = each($ascVarStream)) 
		{ 
			if($strRequestBody != "") 
				$strRequestBody.= "&"; 
			$strRequestBody.= $key."=".$val; 
		} 

	$ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
	curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $strURL);
    curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POST, $strRequestBody);
    curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $strRequestBody);
	$return_string = curl_exec ($ch);
    curl_close ($ch);

	if ($return_string=="") {
		$message="Error: Could not post to remote system.";
		return $message;
	}
	return $return_string;			

} // End function
}
?>