Content grabber?!

fatepower

Hi!

How do i create a content grabber, like the script to get content from imdb?!
I want to create a content grabber for gamesport. So if a user put a full URL for a game at gamesport on my games cheat site, it will show in a table with all summary info about the game.

They put a link like:
http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/resistance2/index.html?sid=6200653

It will be stored into the database (no problem with that, it has allready been added to my site).

Problem is, how to show the info on my cheat site. When they click on cheats for resistance2.

Cheers

dagon

file_get_contnets() to get the page then a whole lot of regular expression work to extract the particular content.

Oh and beware of any copyright issues, just because its on the web doesn't give you the right to take copy for your own site use.

NogDog

Instead of the regexp stuff you might be able to use the [man]DOM[/man] functions.

fatepower

Ok thx for info. Mayebe some code example? What about CURL?

I have started to write something like this:

      <?php
      $curl = curl_init();
      $url = 'http://www.gamespot.com/pages/search/search_ajax.php?q=grid&type=game&offset=0&tags_only=false&sort=rank';
      curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
      curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array("Accept: application/json","X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest"));
      curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
      $result = curl_exec($curl);
      echo $result;
      ?>

bradgrafelman

A point of interest to note is that this activity is actually illegal; the CBS Interactive Site Terms and GameSpot's Terms of Use make it clear that you can't simply "grab" information from their sites and reproduce it.

fatepower

Ohh didn't know that. It was bad i must say. It should be a good idea to easy get games info from gamespot. So users see info about the game when they get the cheats/trainers. Well anything who are legal i can use instead? 😛

NogDog

Most things in life are negotiable. Why not contact the site owner and explain to them what you would like to grab from their site for use in yours, and in exchange that you'll make sure that the results include a prominent link to their site, giving you the desired data and giving them more site traffic. Maybe they'll like that (or some similar arrangement) and give you specific permission to do so within certain restrictions.

Weedpacket

NogDog wrote:
Maybe they'll like that (or some similar arrangement) and give you specific permission to do so within certain restrictions.

If they do that and things go well, you might discover that they'll already go further for you and provide an XML feed to selected parties that they just don't advertise (because if they do provide the data for machine use, they might as well do it in a fashion that reduces irrelevant load on their server). I can think of at least one sporting site that does this.

fatepower

Well i don't know. It was just an idea from me, to bring my users info about the game when they dowload a cheat and provide gamespot whith some advertisment. Don't be some negative here 😛 haha!

NogDog

I don't think we were being negative. I think we were suggesting the possibility of a positive solution that would be beneficial to both parties (you and gamespot) and additionally having the positive effect of protecting you from any potential negative legal issues.