Automatic form entry and HTML parsing

Hi guys, I was wondering if anyone out there would be able to help me...

I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with the two following things...

1) Automatically entering data into a search box or form without actually having any input yourself (Maybe a spider or something of that type???)

2) Parsing the contents of an HTML page and breaking the results into an XML based document...

I have been looking around for a little while but seem to have hit a dead end.

I have no idea where to start (What languages need to be used etc...), and any help anyone could provide would be really appreciated.

Cheers in advance guys ; )

SE

 

Would be fairly straightforward with PHP. Something like:

- Read remote file in, feeding it your keyword

$file = "http://www.domain.com/search.php?q=".$keyword[$x];

$handle = fopen($file, "r");
while (!feof($handle)) {
  $contents .= fread($handle, 8192);

}
fclose($handle);

PHP:

Then while in the loop, process $contents or do it as a bulk process afterwards. You'll need a script that writes out the XML based on the regular expression matches you get from the original file.

$news['dateline'] = date("l, M. jS, Y", $news['dateline'])." ".vbdate($vboptions['timeformat'], $news['dateline']); // date format

	$news['pagetext'] = substr( strip_bbcode($news['pagetext']),0,200)."..."; // post format

	$news['pagetext'] = preg_replace ( "/-/"," ",$news['pagetext'] );

	$news['pagetext'] = preg_replace ( "/“|”/"," ",$news['pagetext'] );

	$newsitems .= "<item>\r<title>$news[title]</title>\r<link>http://www.domain.com/news/news.php?i=$news[threadid]</link>\r<description>$news[pagetext]</description>\r<pubDate>$news[dateline]</pubDate>\r</item>";

PHP:

Then write out the XML file, like...

$filepointer = fopen("./yourrssfeed.xml", "w");

fputs ($filepointer, "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='iso-8859-1' ?>\r<rss version='2.0'>\r<channel>\r<title>domain.com: Top Stories</title>\r<link>http://www.domain.com/</link>\r<description>".$description."</description> \r<language>en-us</language>\r<copyright>Copyright 2004, domain, Inc. All Rights Reserved.</copyright>\r<pubDate>". date("l, M. jS, Y",time()). "</pubDate>\r<lastBuildDate>".$lastbuilddate."</lastBuildDate>\r<category>domain.com: Top Stories</category>");

fputs ($filepointer, $newsitems."\r</channel>\r</rss>");

fclose ($filepointer);

PHP:

 

That is great!

Thanks for your help...

Welcome to the forums BTW ; )

 

Thanks and you're welcome! Need help fleshing it out, let me know.

 

I probabally will (real new to php)...

Let you know...

Cheers for the offer