Obtaining info from a site using PHP

[Evolution445]

I've searched using several terms, but couldn't find my answer. If this question has been asked before, I appologise.

I'm trying to use PHP to get some info from a website, the website sometimes contains 1 or 2 more pages:
http://nw4.novaworld.net/bhd_3_list.lob?page=0

What I want is, as soon as there is a 'Game Name' containing {a.s.u}, make a PHP script get the 'Game Type' and 'Total Players' next to it, and format the info like this:

Game Name
Game Type
Total Players
Online (Or display Offline if there is no Game Name containing {a.s.u})

I actually don't have a clue where to start with, as my experience with PHP is very low. I was thinking using a Get command, but I don't know if such a command is possible with PHP ?

Any help, tips or info about how I could get this done is very appreciated.
Thanks in advance,

Evolution445

[Atli]

You could get the HTML markup of that page by using the file_get_contents function.

Then it would just be a matter of parsing the HTML into something useful.
I would recommend looking into regular expressions for that, using the PCRE functions.

[Evolution445]

Ok, I see. If i get this right, my code should start as:

<?php
 
define('_GAMETYPE', 'Servername:');
define('_PLAYERS', 'Players:');
define('_GAMETYPE', 'Gametype:');
define('_OFFLINE', 'Offline');
define('_ONLINE', 'Online');
 
//********
 
if $file_get_contents( "http://nw4.novaworld.net/bhd_3_list.lob?page=0
" [, FILE_TEXT [, NULL [, OFFSET [, 7 ]]]] ) = "{a.s.u}"
 

maxlen Should thus be 7 because what I'm searching for contains just 7 characters, or should maxlen be NULL cause it has to search a whole page for that ' {a.s.u} ' text ?
And how would I get the Offset where it should read from ?
Sorry if this sounds quite 'nooby' or stupid, but I'm really not experienced with PHP.

[Evolution445]

Sorry to add this, but on my website I made a small block using HTML of how I want the result to look like:
http://img45.imageshack.us/img45/8514/serverstatus1ez9.png

Now it would only have to be PHP code to update the name, TDM, 0/16 and offline/online. How would I be able to get the exact position of where it has to start obtaining info? As on the page Im attemping to get info from, there's a lot more games using the same gametype (TDM) and maximum players ( 0/16 ):
http://nw4.novaworld.net/bhd_3_list.lob?page=0

[Atli]

You would have to get the entire HTML of the resource site and have PHP look through the HTML for the information you need.

Like, if I needed the title of Google's main page, I could do:

<?php
// Get the HTML of the page
$html = file_get_contents("http://www.google.com");
 
// Create a regular expressio that looks for the 
//  <title> tags.
$regEx = '/\<title\>(.*)\<\/title\>/is';
 
// Search, using the regular expression
if(preg_match($regEx, $html, $matches)) {
    // Show the title
    echo "The title is: ". $matches[1];
}
else {
    // It failed!
    echo "Didn't work!";
}
?>
 

You would have to do something similar, replacing the search with something that would look for the info you need.

[Evolution445]

Thanks alot! This is my code so far:

<?php
 
 
$html = file_get_contents("http://nw4.novaworld.net/bhd_3_list.lob?page=0")
 
$regEx = '\{a\.s\.u\}'
 
if(preg_match($regEx, $html, $matches))
{
    echo "<img src="http://asu-clan.info/html/serverstatus/online.bmp">Server Online!"
}
else
{
    echo "<img src="http://asu-clan.info/html/serverstatus/offline.bmp">Server Offline"
}
?>
 

Sorry to bother with another question, but as I said, the page I'm trying to get info from sometimes consists of multiple pages (1 or 2 more), then it looks like this:
http://nw4.novaworld.net/bhd_3_list.lob?page=0
http://nw4.novaworld.net/bhd_3_list.lob?page=1
http://nw4.novaworld.net/bhd_3_list.lob?page=2

Is it possible to use a star ( * ) at the pagenumber ? ( page=* ) Will this make it start from page 0 to page 99999999 till it found ' {a.s.u} ', or is there a better way ?

[Evolution445]

I also seem to be getting an error with the above code:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_VARIABLE in /home/rsksquad/public_html/html/blocks/block-serverstatus.php on line 6

I've tried some things such as changing the regEx into one single letter but it just doesnt seem to work


EDIT:

I fixed this error now, but now it says:

unexpected T_ELSE in /home/rsksquad/public_html/html/blocks/block-serverstatus.php on line 10

<?php
 
$html = file_get_contents("http://nw4.novaworld.net/bhd_3_list.lob?page=0");
 
$regEx = 'a\.s\.u SAS';
 
if (preg_match($regEx, $html, $matches)); {
    echo "<img src=http://asu-clan.info/html/serverstatus/online.bmp>Server Online!";
}
else {
    echo "<img src=http://asu-clan.info/html/serverstatus/offline.bmp>Server Offline";
}
?>
 

[Evolution445]

I cannot seem to edit my latest post, Im sorry to reply again :(

I now have this code:

<?php
 
$html = file_get_contents("http://nw4.novaworld.net/bhd_3_list.lob?page=0");
 
$regEx = 'a\.s\.u SAS';
if (preg_match_all($regEx, $html, $matches)) {
    print_r($matches);
    print "a.s.u SAS Server";
    print "<br>";
    print "<img src=http://asu-clan.info/html/serverstatus/online.bmp>Server Online!";
} else {
    print "a.s.u SAS Server";
    print "<br>";
    print "<img src=http://asu-clan.info/html/serverstatus/offline.bmp>Server Offline";
}
 
?>
 
 
 
<?php
 
$html = file_get_contents("http://nw4.novaworld.net/bhd_3_list.lob?page=0");
 
$regEx = '\{a\.s\.u\}';
if (preg_match_all($regEx, $html, $matches)) {
    print "a.s.u Sniper Server";
    print "<br>";
    print "<img src=http://asu-clan.info/html/serverstatus/online.bmp>Server Online!";
} else {
    print "a.s.u Sniper Server";
    print "<br>";
    print "<img src=http://asu-clan.info/html/serverstatus/offline.bmp>Server Offline";
}
 
?>
 

I still dont know how I can make it read more sites than just one, I tried several things but they only resulted in errors.

With my current code, I seem to get these errors:

Warning: preg_match_all() [function.preg-match-all]: Delimiter must not be alphanumeric or backslash in /home/rsksquad/public_html/html/blocks/block-serverstatus.php on line 6

Warning: preg_match_all() [function.preg-match-all]: Delimiter must not be alphanumeric or backslash in /home/rsksquad/public_html/html/blocks/block-serverstatus.php on line 23

[Evolution445]

Resolved, thanks for help though Atli.