Get Content From File or URL With PHP

PHP offers numerous ways to obtain the content of files and at URLs. The content thus retrieved can be scanned, changed, stored in a database, or published on a web page.

For many or most situations, the easiest way to obtain content from files or URLs is with the file_get_contents() function.

Examples of inserting obtained content into a web page include:

• Quote-of-the-day or other time-sensitive content.

• Newsy information like progress on a vacation trip.

• Poems, stories, or articles another website makes available for syndication or otherwise gives permission.

• Ads that are updated intermittently.

Retrieved content may need to be processed before publishing on a web page. As examples, it may contain unwanted headers, HTML tags, or extraneous content.

Here is code for an illustration. It obtains the content of a web page containing poetry. The content is processed to remove all other web page content. Then, it publishes the poem.

<?php
$text = file_get_contents('https://willbontrager.com/poems/lamenting-alone-and-not.php');
$text = preg_replace('/^.*<article>/si','',$text);
$text = preg_replace('/<\/article>.*$/si','',$text);
echo $text;
?>

At the first line of the code, the file_get_contents function grabs the web page at the URL. The content is stored in the $text variable.

At the second and third lines, everything in the $text content (which is the source code of the web page) is removed except what is between the article tags, where the poem is. Everthing above and including the <article> tag is removed first. Then the next line removes everything below and including the </article> tag.

At the fourth and last line of the above code, the content of $text is published on the web page.

Tap here to view the poem obtained with the above code.

To reiterate, the file_get_contents() function gets content from an external file, which may be from a file on the local server or at a URL. The content can be stored in a variable. You then program your PHP software to do what you want with the content in the variable.

(This content first appeared in Possibilities newsletter.)

Will Bontrager