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For 2023 (and 2024 ...) - we are now fully retired from IT training.
We have made many, many friends over 25 years of teaching about Python, Tcl, Perl, PHP, Lua, Java, C and C++ - and MySQL, Linux and Solaris/SunOS too. Our training notes are now very much out of date, but due to upward compatability most of our examples remain operational and even relevant ad you are welcome to make us if them "as seen" and at your own risk.

Lisa and I (Graham) now live in what was our training centre in Melksham - happy to meet with former delegates here - but do check ahead before coming round. We are far from inactive - rather, enjoying the times that we are retired but still healthy enough in mind and body to be active!

I am also active in many other area and still look after a lot of web sites - you can find an index ((here))
Retreiving a web page in PHP

Posted by admin (Graham Ellis), 11 August 2002
I was asked "I want to grab a web page from another site every day using a PHP program.   How can I do it?"

Firstly, I'm going to question whether PHP is the best tool for the job;  there's a linux command called wget that you can use to retrieve a page without having to do any programming at all.  However ... if you do want to code it in PHP, remember that functions that read files will equally easy read from a URL if you give them one.  Thus, you can pick up a web page with a piece of code as simple as:

Code:
#!/usr/bin/php -q
<?
$stuff = file("http://www.wellho.net");
print implode ("",$stuff);
?>


Since my questioner asked me about a "daily job", I've written this example to run from the command line .... then you'll be able to run it using crontab if you're fortuante enough to have access.  Write something like
     12  4  *  *  *  /home/graham/bin/graburl
into your crontab file to collect the file at 12 minutes after 4 every morning, even if you're still asleep!

Posted by admin (Graham Ellis), 17 October 2002
Just adding that you can also use ftp: (and https as your protocol if you want to , and they also apply to all the other file reading functions in PHP too.   The "-q" command line option in my example asks for quiet mode, which supresseses the "Content Type" header as were not using PHP as part of a web page, and also supresses tags that would normally be added around any warning and error messages from the PHP



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