Is it possible to parse data from a different website into my website?

Phil · January 10th, 2008, 07:20 AM

I'm not entirely sure where to start on this.

Basically a website I'm currently working on for a Financial Advisor Company want to have a display of the current Stock indices on their page

This information can be easily accessed from various websites.
Ideally they would like parts of the information from the table in this London Stock Exchange page (LSE page)

To my mind the page needs

when accessed/refreshed to access the LSE page

collect the data from this page

carry out some manipulations of this data

display this information on the page

I just don't know really where to start to do this so any help/suggestions would be useful? It doesn't need to be ASP if a different language would be able to do this easier/better?

Monie · January 10th, 2008, 08:35 PM

I got "400 Bad Request" with your link!

You could do it either ways:

The ASP Ways
The PHP Ways

I never tried it but the article I found look's promising

alexgeek · January 10th, 2008, 09:08 PM

The best way is to use the PHP cURL functions.

Monie · January 10th, 2008, 10:23 PM

I've use this perfectly

but the Style Sheet seems to be "neglected"

HTML Code:

<%
      Dim objHTTP
      Set objHTTP = Server.CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
      objHTTP.Open "GET", "http://www.webforumz.com", false
      objHTTP.Send
      Response.Write objHTTP.ResponseText
%>

alexgeek · January 10th, 2008, 10:41 PM

Monie, the stylesheet is relative the the site.
e.g.
<link href="style.css">

That would refer to a file on your site that you didn't have now that you've stolen someone's page ha.

So you have to replace the link from relative to absolute.

You'd do it like so in php:

Code:


			
//assume $grab holds a string of the page we got
$grab = str_replace('style.css', 'http://www.sitename.com/style.css', $grab);

Monie · January 10th, 2008, 11:08 PM

Oh I see...
That means we have to "borrow" their .css file and keep/copy it in our local css folder, right!

Cool...
Thanks.

alexgeek · January 11th, 2008, 06:45 AM

No it means we have to point to there's instead of ours (which doesn't exist).
So we replace the link with a link to their style.css.

Monie · January 11th, 2008, 08:18 PM

Right...
That clear things up! Thanks..