How to search html file for simple string?

Question

If you notice, each seller has this block (similar, at least):

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/shops/AN8LN2YPKS7DF/ref=olp_merch_name_2">
<img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41UQmT7-XyL.jpg" width="120" alt="DataVision Computer Video" height="30" border="0" />
</a> //and other junk

I want to search this page for http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41UQmT7-XyL.jpg, which is the seller image (which I already have the link for). I just want to know if the search produced results, or not. I don't even need to know more than that. Is this possible? How can I do it using PHP?

Use a HTML parser. See [Best methods to parse HTML with PHP](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3577641/best-methods-to-parse-html-with-php) — Pekka, Aug 22 '11 at 21:18
@Pekka: I don't want to parse the html. I want to download the html on the server and see if a simple string is present. Parsing seems like overkill. — Shorty., Aug 22 '11 at 21:24
I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to do here - if it's searching Amazon programmatically, [you may find this interesting...](http://scripts.incutio.com/amazon/) — DaveRandom, Aug 22 '11 at 21:26

ldiqual · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-22T21:33:01.260

4

You could use strpos():

$url = "http://www.example.com/";
$html = file_get_contents($url);
if (strpos($html, "http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41UQmT7-XyL.jpg") !== false) {
  // found
} else {
  // not found
}

edited Aug 22 '11 at 21:33

answered Aug 22 '11 at 21:20

ldiqual

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How do I download the html to put in the variable? – Shorty. Aug 22 '11 at 21:22
1

`$html = file_get_contents($url)` – ldiqual Aug 22 '11 at 21:23
Weird, getting this error: `Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_IF in...` – Shorty. Aug 22 '11 at 21:27
You have probably missed a semi-colon or a closing bracket off the line before the line number in the error message... – DaveRandom Aug 22 '11 at 21:27
Yes I did. Now I'm getting `Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ')' `. Doesn't look like I'm missing a closing parentheses, though. – Shorty. Aug 22 '11 at 21:30

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 22 '11 at 21:20

If you just want to know if a particular string is present or not, use strpos():

if (strpos($html_goes_here, 'http://ecx.blahblah.jpg') !== FALSE)) {
   ... image is present ...
}

Note the use of the strict comparison operator, as per the warnings on the linked documentation page.

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Aug 22 '11 at 21:37

1

I mixed params in my comment and you wanted to know how to load the HTML of the URL:

$url = "http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00519RW1U";
$html = file_get_contents($url);
$found = false !== strpos($html, 'src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41UQmT7-XyL.jpg"');

edited Aug 22 '11 at 21:37

Marc B

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answered Aug 22 '11 at 21:29

hakre

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Missing semi-colon, and why are you executing a url as a system command? ;-) – DaveRandom Aug 22 '11 at 21:34
Thank you. However, you really messed up the first line. Should be in quotes `""` instead of backticks, and missing the semicolon. – Shorty. Aug 22 '11 at 21:35

How to search html file for simple string?

3 Answers3

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