get div conents from external url - best method - PHP? DOM? jQuery?

Question

I am trying to get the contents of a div from the id name.

Here is the div I am trying to get: <div id="article-body"> ... </div>

However, this is on another external website so it has to be called with a www or an http:// etc...

I am sure it's possible. Just not sure if I should use PHP, DOM or jQuery etc..

I am thinking this code should be possible to do in a few lines. Just don't know what is the best method. Thanks for the tips or ideas.

UPDATE: It was suggested this was a duplicate question. It is not. I have used the code from the suggested duplicate question below and it does not work.

Here is one of the errors: Warning: DOMDocument::loadHTML() [domdocument.loadhtml]: ID changeRegionForm already defined in Entity, line: 85 in /home/content/w/i/s/wisdom33/html/testing/getDivExternalWebsite.php on line 14

Here is a link to the code: http://massmediamail.com/testing/getDivExternalWebsite.php

Here is the code:

<html>

<body>
<?
$doc = new DomDocument;

// We need to validate our document before refering to the id
$doc->validateOnParse = true;
$doc->loadHtml(file_get_contents('http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/second-madagascar-archbishop-criticizes-catholic-relief-services-full-trans'));

var_dump($doc->getElementById('article-body'));
?>
</body>
</html>

Possible duplicates: stackoverflow.com/questions/5045598/… stackoverflow.com/questions/26947/… stackoverflow.com/questions/3577641/… — Amal
– Amal, Commented Sep 9, 2013 at 20:07
Wait... are you trying to fetch contents from external site and then put them inside a DIV with ID=article-body in your page, or you want to fetch the contents of a DIV with ID=article-body that is actually on another site? — LexLythius
– LexLythius, Commented Sep 9, 2013 at 20:10
Just need the contents. And then I will package them in a div but with my own css styles etc. — Papa De Beau
– Papa De Beau, Commented Sep 9, 2013 at 20:11
@PapaDeBeau Sorry, I still don't understand: where does DIV#article-body exist, in your page or in the external source? (Not its contents, the DIV element itself.) This is important because the latter would imply parsing the HTML you get from the external source — LexLythius
– LexLythius, Commented Sep 9, 2013 at 20:15
@Amal its not a duplicate because I tried the code from one of those sites you suggested and I got this error: Warning: DOMDocument::loadHTML() [domdocument.loadhtml]: ID changeRegionForm already defined in Entity, line: 85 in /home/content/w/i/s/wisdom33/html/testing/getDivExternalWebsite.php on line 14 — Papa De Beau
– Papa De Beau, Commented Sep 9, 2013 at 20:16

Papa De Beau · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-10 00:21:54Z

7

The answer is in http://simplehtmldom.sourceforge.net/

And once you download the code from the above url and place it in the appropriate place and link to it correctly then this code at the bottom works just perfect for what I asked above.

<?php

// Note you must download the php files from the link above 
// and link to them on this line below. 
include_once('../simple_html_dom.php');

$html = file_get_html('http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/second-madagascar-archbishop-criticizes-catholic-relief-services-full-trans');
$elem = $html->find('div[id=article-body]', 0);
echo $elem;

?>

answered Sep 10, 2013 at 0:21

Papa De Beau

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1 Comment

Maverick Over a year ago

Exactly what i was looking for. I tried others but they remove the inner tags.

LexLythius · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-09 20:25:10Z

1

This is wrong:

 <div> id="article-body" </div>

should be

 <div id="article-body"></div>

I guess you want to use jQuery.ajax to load contents from other source.

Since you want a specific part of the data inside some external URL (the contents of DIV#article-body), you will have to parse the full external content to get just what you need.

I would try jQuery's parseHTML.

edited Sep 9, 2013 at 20:25

answered Sep 9, 2013 at 20:09

LexLythius

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6 Comments

Papa De Beau Over a year ago

Sorry that was an error as I wrote the question. Fixed this. Thanks

Papa De Beau Over a year ago

And with this I can get a specific div? Ok I will try. Thanks

LexLythius Over a year ago

Note that this is the client-side approach, and you will have to watch out for issues with the same-origin policy, which you may be able to circumvent by using JSONP (in jQuery, dataType: "jsonp").

LexLythius Over a year ago

The other alternative is to use your own server as a reverse proxy, fetching these contents using [cURL](php.net/manual/en/book.curl.php‎). But this is much heavier on your server.

Papa De Beau Over a year ago

Thanks LexLythius, not sure what your comment about same-origin policy means.... but I will look into curl. I don't think the jQuery will work but I have not tried it yet.

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