- In this tutorial you will learn how to scrape the data from websites with Zenscrape API using PHP. The Zenscrape API provides an easy solution to scrape the web pages data without having any technical knowledge. You can use their visual web scraper with simple options to scrape the data into your desired data format like CSV, JSON etc.
- PHP Beginner’s guide to Web Scraping with PHP. This guide describes the way to scrape web pages with PHP. Generate PHP script to access Dataflow Kit API.
As a PHP programmer, we often need to get some data from another website for some purpose. Getting data from another websites is known as web scraping. Scrapping website data is not an easy task as it creates many challenges.
When it comes to browsing the web, the most commonly used. Dec 12, 2020 In this tutorial you will learn how to scrape data from website using PHP. The tutorial is explained in easy steps with live demo and download demo source code. So let’s start the coding. We will have following file structure for data scraping tutorial. Index.php; scrape.js; Steps1: Create Form To Enter Website URL.
So if you’re looking for solution to scrape data, then you’re here at the right place. In this tutorial you will learn how to scrape data from website using PHP.
The tutorial is explained in easy steps with live demo and download demo source code.
So let’s start the coding. We will have following file structure for data scraping tutorial
- index.php
- scrape.js
Steps1: Create Form To Enter Website URL
As we will handle this tutorial with demo, so first we will create From in index.php with submit button to enter website URL to scrape data.
What Is Web Scraping
Steps2: Create PHP Function Get Website Data
Now we will create a PHP function scrapeWebsiteData in scrape.php to get website data using PHP cURL library that allows you to connect and communicate to many different types of servers with many different types of protocols.
In above function, we are checking whether PHP cURL is installed or not. Here we have used three cURL functions curl_init() initializes the session, curl_exec() executes, and curl_close() to close connection. The variable CURLOPT_URL is used to set the website URL that we scrapping. The second CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER is used to tell to store scraped page in a variable rather than its default, which is to simply display the entire page as it is.
Steps3: Scrape Particular Data from Website
Now finally we will handle functionality to scrape particular section of page. As mostly we don’t want all data from page, just need section of page or data. So here in this example, we will look for latest posts at PHPZAG.COM. For this we will pass that particular section from which we start getting data and end point. Here we have have used CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER variable to that particular scraped section of page.
if(isset($_POST['submit'])){
$html = scrapeWebsiteData($_POST['website_url']);
$start_point = strpos($html, '<h3>Latest Posts</h3>');
$end_point = strpos($html, '</div>', $start_point);
$length = $end_point-$start_point;
$html = substr($html, $start_point, $length);
echo $html;
}
Now have a list of latest posts from PHPZAG.COM. This is really a simple example to get that particular section of page. You can go further to get useful data from websites according to your requirement. For example, you can scrape data from eCommerce websites to get product details, price etc. The point is, once the website data in your hands, you can do whatever you want.
You can view the live demo from the Demo link and can download the script from the Download link below.
DemoDownload
As a PHP programmer, we often need to get some data from another website for some purpose. Getting data from another websites is known as web scraping. Scrapping website data is not an easy task as it creates many challenges.
So if you’re looking for solution to scrape data, then you’re here at the right place. In this tutorial you will learn how to scrape data from website using PHP.
The tutorial is explained in easy steps with live demo and download demo source code.
So let’s start the coding. We will have following file structure for data scraping tutorial
- index.php
- scrape.js
Steps1: Create Form To Enter Website URL
As we will handle this tutorial with demo, so first we will create From in index.php with submit button to enter website URL to scrape data.
Steps2: Create PHP Function Get Website Data
Now we will create a PHP function scrapeWebsiteData in scrape.php to get website data using PHP cURL library that allows you to connect and communicate to many different types of servers with many different types of protocols.
In above function, we are checking whether PHP cURL is installed or not. Here we have used three cURL functions curl_init() initializes the session, curl_exec() executes, and curl_close() to close connection. The variable CURLOPT_URL is used to set the website URL that we scrapping. The second CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER is used to tell to store scraped page in a variable rather than its default, which is to simply display the entire page as it is.
Steps3: Scrape Particular Data from Website
Now finally we will handle functionality to scrape particular section of page. As mostly we don’t want all data from page, just need section of page or data. So here in this example, we will look for latest posts at PHPZAG.COM. For this we will pass that particular section from which we start getting data and end point. Here we have have used CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER variable to that particular scraped section of page.
if(isset($_POST['submit'])){
$html = scrapeWebsiteData($_POST['website_url']);
$start_point = strpos($html, '<h3>Latest Posts</h3>');
$end_point = strpos($html, '</div>', $start_point);
$length = $end_point-$start_point;
$html = substr($html, $start_point, $length);
echo $html;
}
Php Curl Web Scraping Example
Now have a list of latest posts from PHPZAG.COM. This is really a simple example to get that particular section of page. You can go further to get useful data from websites according to your requirement. For example, you can scrape data from eCommerce websites to get product details, price etc. The point is, once the website data in your hands, you can do whatever you want.
Php Web Scraping Examples
You can view the live demo from the Demo link and can download the script from the Download link below.
DemoDownload