Send a url that points to the page you want to strip the info from. Or look into
another service or site that may give you the quotes in a raw text format. Also look
into the http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.strip-tags.php function in PHP.
Michael
On Saturday, January 13, 2001, at 03:11 PM, James Duncan wrote:
> Hi again,
>
> Thanks for your help so far. I will explain what I'm trying to achieve. I
> want to pull down a web page that contains share prices, extract those share
> prices, and update a database with the new prices. What I want is a nice and
> neat solution that runs like a service (i.e. I can stop and start it from a
> web browser, change the update interval (how long it waits before it repeats
> the process)), etc.
>
> I know a little PHP and Javascript (what I've taught/learnt over the last
> few weeks). The process I have so far (not implemented at all yet):
>
> 1) PHP script that pulls down the relevant web page to my server
> 2) Data extraction from HTML web page
> 3) Updating of database with data from step 2
> 4) Running step 1 again after a certain period of time
>
> Step 2 is the most complex by far. I was hoping to use PHP to access the
> #text value via DOM but obviously this isn't possible because the DOM
> doesn't exist server-side but only after the HTML has been rendered
> client-side. Like you say, I could create a form and hidden fields in the
> HTML file and use Javascript to read the #text node values into the hidden
> fields. Then trigger a POST operation, where I can read in all the values
> but I don't like the sound of this because then I would have to have a
> browser interacting with my PHP scripts!?! I'm trying to create a
> self-contained "service" that doesn't have any external dependants.
>
> Is there any other way of accomplishing this without involving a browser?
> The only other way I can see is to use PHP to strip all HTML tags, leaving
> just the text? I could then write PHP code to read in the remaining text,
> etc.
>
> What is the best way to accomplish this? Is there a PHP command that strips
> all HTML tags (and Javascript, etc) from an HTML file? Example code would be
> great ;)
>
> Thanks
>
> James
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Stearne [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: 13 January 2001 18:40
> To: James Duncan
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE: [PHP-WIN] DOM
>
> No, actually I think that using PHP to insert the FORM and then use
> Javascript to get the #text node values would be easier. Parsing Table
> cells using RegExs is no fun.
>
> Michael
>
> On Saturday, January 13, 2001, at 01:06 PM, James Duncan wrote:
>
> > But surely if I'm using fopen to insert a hidden form and fields I might
> as
> > well use fopen to extract the data from the HTML page in the first place?
> It
> > just seems so much easier to capture the #text node values from the DOM,
> > rather than using fopen to locate the same information!?!
> >
> > Another idea would be to use my Javascript to capture the text node values
> > from the DOM and write it to a cookie file. The contents of the cookie
> file
> > could then by read by PHP to populate the database?
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > James
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Michael Stearne [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > Sent: 13 January 2001 17:32
> > To: James Duncan
> > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Subject: RE: [PHP-WIN] DOM
> >
> >
> > On Saturday, January 13, 2001, at 12:20 PM, James Duncan wrote:
> >
> > > I don't think this will work in my case because I don't control the
> layout
> > > of the HTML page and hence can't add the hidden fields. I'm downloading
> > the
> > > HTML pages from a website. It would require as much work to insert the
> > > hidden fields as trying to strip the HTML tags in an attempt to read the
> > > data directly from the HTML page itself. There must be a way to access
> the
> > > DOM directly from PHP? I notice in the manual there is a section
> regarding
> > > XML DOM but not the DOM itself.
> > >
> > > Are the DOM values only available on the client? If that's the case then
> > PHP
> > > can't be used to read them because it's limited to the server side?
> >
> > Well by the time you are talking about PHP is out of the picture. PHP can
> > be used to generate a DOM but once its generated PHP (or any server side
> > language) is out of the picture, it then goes to the client-side stuff
> like
> > you said. You can use PHP's fopen() to grab the page and then add the form
> > and hidden fields I was talking about. By doing this, you are setting up
> > the page to be handled correctly by the Javascript code you inserted
> through
> > PHP.
> >
> > Michael
> >
> > >
> > > Thanks
> > >
> > > James
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Michael Stearne [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > > Sent: 13 January 2001 17:06
> > > To: James Duncan
> > > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > > Subject: Re: [PHP-WIN] DOM
> > >
> > > Could you do something like:
> > >
> > >
> >
> myForm.myField.value=tablejames.firstChild.childNodes[1].childNodes[4].first
> > > Child.firstChild.node Value;
> > >
> > > Set up a form of hidden fields. Extract the values from the DOM and
> then
> > > have the user hit a Submit button to get to the next page. At that
> point
> > > the values that were collected and put into the hidden form fields will
> be
> > > submitted and you next page (the PHP page) could INSERT the values into
> > the
> > > database,
> > >
> > > Michael
> > >
> > >
> > > On Friday, January 12, 2001, at 07:30 PM, James Duncan wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hi folks,
> > > >
> > > > I'm still new to HTML, Javascript and PHP but learning (fast
> hopefully).
> > > > I've just started accessing DOM elements. I have worked out how to
> > update
> > > > the contents of table cells directly using this method, etc. In
> > Javascript
> > > I
> > > > would use code like:
> > > >
> > > > alert("Value is: " +
> > > >
> > >
> >
> tablejames.firstChild.childNodes[1].childNodes[4].firstChild.firstChild.node
> > > > Name);
> > > > alert("Value is: " +
> > > >
> > >
> >
> tablejames.firstChild.childNodes[1].childNodes[5].firstChild.firstChild.node
> > > > Value);
> > > >
> > > > This Javascript shows the name and value of the child element.
> > > >
> > > > Now I want to use PHP to extract data (values) from HTML pages like I
> do
> > > > with the above Javascript. Is this possible? Obviously with the
> > Javascript
> > > > the HTML page has already been rendered in the browser (i.e. all tree
> > > > elements have been created). This makes extracting data a simple case
> of
> > > > finding the "#text" elements and reading in the values. Can I do the
> > same
> > > > thing with PHP and an HTML file I've downloaded from the Internet?
> > > Obviously
> > > > this file is sitting on my server and hasn't been rendered in a
> > browser...
> > > >
> > > > The whole point of this exercise is so that I can extract values from
> an
> > > > HTML table and populate them into a database. Maybe it's easier to
> > process
> > > > the HTML file line by line and strip the unwanted HTML tags? However,
> > with
> > > > this approach I've got to hardcode each webpage...
> > > >
> > > > If this is a silly question then sorry but you only learn if you ask
> ;)
> > > >
> > > > Thanks
> > > >
> > > > James
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > PHP Windows Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
> > > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > > > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > > > To contact the list administrators, e-mail:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > PHP Windows Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
> > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
--
PHP Windows Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
