Remove From a String

imanseau

Ok, I am using cURL to pull stock data from MSN. So it can be displayed in a format I want. I have cURL up and pulling the first page. I want to be able to strip everything before the P/E and after.

Here is the start of my PHP code.

<?PHP
// Sets MSN Money URLs
$quote = "http://moneycentral.msn.com/detail/stock_quote?Symbol=";

$stock = MMM;

$ch = curl_init();    						// initialize curl handle 
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$quote . $stock); 		// set url to post to 
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, 1); 
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);		// allow redirects 
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1); 		// return into a variable 
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 3); 			// times out after 4s 
$result = curl_exec($ch); 					// run the whole process 
curl_close($ch);  

echo $result;
?>

Here is a snipit of the results

Earnings/Share</td><td class="cl1">5.59</td></tr><tr><td>Forward P/E</td><td class="cl1">14.80</td></tr><tr><td>Market Cap.</td><td class="cl1">56.85 Bil</td></tr><tr><td>P/E</td><td class="cl1">14.40</td></tr><tr><td>Return on Equity</td><td class="cl1">37.74</td></tr>

One problem I can see is P/E shows up twice. Once as Forward P/E and then the P/E I want. Now I only need the number from the P/E, in this case it is 14.40. That is all I need. My problem is how to go about striping everything before and after the 14.40.

bradgrafelman

You could use [man]preg_match/man to match that data. Your pattern would probably look something like:

$pattern = '@<td>P/E</td>.*?([0-9\.]+)@s';

imanseau

I found a solution to the problem, it is a three step process. I will post the code later, when I get home.

imanseau

Ok the values I was trying to pull changed but here is the code.

	$result = curl_exec($ch); 					// run the whole process 
	curl_close($ch);  

// Finds the pos number just before Company Name
$cut1 = strpos($result,"<h1 class=\"h1a\">") + 16;

// Finds the pos number just after Company Name
$cut2 = @strpos($result,": Key Ratios  </h1>",$cut1);

// Finds the length of the results string
$length = strlen($result);

// Starts the Company Name string and removes all data after the Company Name
$coname = str_replace(substr($result,$cut2,$length),'',$result);

// Removes the data before the Company Name
$coname = str_replace(substr($coname,0,$cut1),'',$coname);

In case you need to use this here I go trying to explain the code. cut1 uses a constant before tha value, one that I know only shows up there. I also know my value I want is after this constant. So I find the pos of that string and add 16 to put the value of cut1 at the start of my value. cut2 does the same thing but at the end of the value. coname the first one removes from result starting at cut2 (that is just after the value I want) to the end of the string using length. The second time coname shows up it removes from coname from pos 0 to cut1 (just before the value I want). The end result is $coname = what ever it pulled from the site. You can use this on any site.

If you have any ideas on improving this let me know.