[RESOLVED] Retreiving Content

[grantiago]

I found this content retrieval example on phpbuilder and it works fine. thanks. what i need help with is just printing the surrounded content and not the start and stop points the code uses to select the content.

the tip is here: http://www.phpbuilder.com/tips/item.php?id=113

<?php
$url = 'http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nv/nwis/uv?13162225';
$lines_array = file($url);
$lines_string = implode('', $lines_array);
eregi("Discharge, cubic feet per second(.*)<img src=\"/nwisweb/data/img/", $lines_string, $head);
$lines = split("\n", $head[0]);
$x = count($lines);
for ($i=0;$i<$x;$i++) {
  echo $lines[$i];
  }
/** The explanation  

* 1. Specified the url (or the page) that we will gonna retrieve 
* 2. Store the whole code into array called $lines_array 
* 3. We parse *the content from $lines_array into $lines_string 
* 4. We 'cut' the whole code with an eregi function.. in this case we want to take *the information which is start from the
* <!--http://www.php.net/--> until ended with <!-- end body -->. How do I know this ?? 
* Check the HTML source from php.net =) 
* 5. Split them into new array.. in this case we split them with a newline character 
* 6. and 
* 7. We loop the whole array and write it into our HTML source. 
*/

?>

I don't want to print: Discharge, cubic feet per second
or: "/nwisweb/data/img/

or whatever bit of content I'm using to mark the content I want.

thanks.

[bpat1434]

Okay. First thing you probably should have done was look at the manual page for [man]eregi[/man] to see its use. You'll note that it says that $head will be an array. The first element being what was matched, the subsequent elements being the sub-groupings within the pattern. So in your case, you should be able to echo $head[1] and get what's in the (.*) part of your expression.

Also note that that is from 2000 and is "outdated". There are other, more powerful functions at your disposal like [man]preg_match/man to do the matching, and you can use [man]file_get_contents/man to get the contents of any file you want.

[bradgrafelman]

Did you consider using the proper methods provided for automated retrievals from that website?

[grantiago]

Thanks. I've changed to preg_match and file_get_contents. I've also read the automated retrievals page at usgs. It took me most of the day to get this working. I guess that's why they call this forum Newbies :queasy:

The biggest hurdle was to start I was simply following preg_match example 3 on php.net and not loading the usgs page into a string first.

here is what I came up with:

test content first with array
<?php
echo '<br />';
 	error_reporting(E_ALL);
	$usgs = file_get_contents('http://waterdata.usgs.gov/id/nwis/current?site_no=13247500&index_pmcode_00060=1&format=rdb');
	//echo $flows;
	echo '<br />';
	// Example string
	//$str = "Let's find the stuff <bla>in between</bla> these two previous brackets";

// Let's perform the regex
$do = preg_match("/0:00(.*)$/", $usgs, $matches);

// Check if regex was successful
if ($do = true) {
// Matched something, show the matched string
//echo htmlentities($matches['0']);

// Also how the text in between the tags
echo '<br />';
echo 'Main Payette River ';
echo '<b>' . $matches['1'] . '</b>';
echo ' cfs';
	} else {
// No Match
echo "Couldn't find a match";
	}
?>

Now I need to figure out how to print some colored images depending on the number returned!

[bpat1434]

Just an FYI: $do will always be true with the code you have written. To evaluate whether $do is true or not, use "==".

[grantiago]

I've cleaned the above code but it is so slooooooow.

<?php
 	error_reporting(E_ALL);
	$main = file_get_contents('http://waterdata.usgs.gov/id/nwis/current?site_no=13247500&index_pmcode_00060=1&format=rdb');
	$look ='/0:00(.*)$/';
		preg_match($look, $main, $matches);
echo 'Main Payette River '. 
			'<b>' . $matches['1'] . '</b>'.
			' cfs'. '<br />';

I imagine it is the response of the usgs server.

Can you point me towards a solution to speeding things up?