Extracting info from external web page

[ForcesResources]

Hi all

I am trying to automate a process that enables me to collect the latest National website

There is a segment of the page HTML that goes

HTML: Select all

          <div id="lottoResultsHeader" >
              <h2><img src="/player/i/homepage/lottoheader218x27.gif" alt="Lotto results" /></h2>

              <p class="resultsText">Draw  1305 Wed 25 Jun 08</p>
                <div id="lottoDraw">
                <img src="/player/i/balls/lotto_11.gif" alt="ball 11" width="19" height="19" class="lottoball" />
                <img src="/player/i/balls/lotto_12.gif" alt="ball 12" width="19" height="19" class="lottoball" />
                <img src="/player/i/balls/lotto_22.gif" alt="ball 22" width="19" height="19" class="lottoball" />
                <img src="/player/i/balls/lotto_23.gif" alt="ball 23" width="19" height="19" class="lottoball" />
                <img src="/player/i/balls/lotto_24.gif" alt="ball 24" width="19" height="19" class="lottoball" />
                <img src="/player/i/balls/lotto_36.gif" alt="ball 36" width="19" height="19" class="lottoball" />
                <img src="/player/i/balls/lotto_26.gif" alt="Bonus ball 26" width="19" height="19" class="lottoballlast" /><span class="star">Bonus Ball</span>
            </div>

Is there a way to extract the numbers ie 11, 12, 22, 23, 24, 36, 26 from the code.
There is a load of code before this but I have started the code here as the div has an id.

Thanks in advance for any help.
john

[Rob]

ok.. here is the process.... Im not going to write it for you but will give you what you need to do.

Firstly, you cant do this in javascript to my knowledge, you would need ASP or PHP.

Using fopen (php) or an HTTP request object (ASP) you would need to request the page.

Then using a regular expression or splitting the string into an array you would need to isolate this section:-
<div id="lottoDraw">
images code here
</div>

Then you would need to split that section into an array using the following delimeter:-
<img src="/player/i/balls/lotto_

What you are left with is an array containing all the draw info.
each element of the array will look like this:-
11.gif" alt="ball 11" width="19" height="19" class="lottoball" />

This just leaves you the task of looking for the occurence of .gif .... in code just isolate that and strip it, and everything else after it.

Do that for each array element and you are left with your draw info.

You will need to handle the bonus ball differerently but should you get this far, you should easy be able to work out that process.

Hope this helps....

btw.... once youve decided on a language to use let me know in this thread and i will move it to the appropriate forum.

[ForcesResources]

Thanks Rob

It will be php as that is what I premeditatedly use.

I have having trouble already though. I get nothing from thye fopen and when I try and get the filesize I get nothing back

PHP: Select all

<?php echo filesize("http://www.national-lottery.co.uk/player/p/results/results.do");?>

Could this have anything to do with the fopen not working?

John

[Rob]

I'm not totally sure filesize will work on a remote file...

Try using:-
$myVar = file_get_contents("http://yoururl");

[CloudedVision]

fopen will not work on external servers. You want PHP's cURL.