Simple html dom php returns empty array with find

Question

I'm trying to pick out content from a div in an external html file. Here's the html code

<some html>
    {<div id="responseDiv" style="display:none">




    required content
    </div>
</some html>

Here's the php code I'm using

include_once('simple_html_dom.php');
$curl_h = curl_init('http://www.example.com/');

curl_setopt($curl_h, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER,
array(
    'User-Agent: NoBrowser v0.1 beta',
)
);

curl_setopt($curl_h, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

$handle = curl_exec($curl_h);

$html = str_get_html('$handle');
$ret = $html->find('div[id=DivID]'); 
   foreach ($ret as $post)
  {
    echo $post->outertext;
      }

I check around and found that $ret itself is an empty array. I have tried playing around with other div IDs etc but all to the same result. What am I doing wrong??

Marc B · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-07 20:21:13Z

2

This:

$html = str_get_html('$handle');

should be:

$html = str_get_html($handle);
                     ^--   ^-- no quotes

The ' turn it into a string, which doesn't interpolate variables. So you're feeding the literal text $, h, a, etc... as your html document, NOT the html you just retrieved via curl.

answered Mar 7, 2014 at 20:21

Marc B

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2 Comments

TDsouza Over a year ago

Thanks for pointing that out, I have made the changes, however even now when I try echoing $post->outertext it displays a blank page(just like before). Initially I had var_dumped #ret that was how I had found out that it was an empty array. Now when I try a var_dump on $ret it crashes the browser.

TDsouza Over a year ago

Oh never mind, I figured it out. I should have echoed plaintext instead of outertext. Works fine now!! thanks again

Cedric Guindon · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-07 20:42:29Z

0

Is ajax an option for you?

If so:

    $.ajax({
        type:"GET",
        url:"path/to/file.html",
        dataType:"html",
        success:function(data) {
            var out = "";
            $(data).find("#div.id.you.want.to.fetch").each(function(loop, item){
                out += $(item).html();
            });
            data = out;
            $("#responseDiv").html(data);
        },
        error:function() {
            alert("Error");
        }
    });

The .each() is there so you can use it with class instead of ID

answered Mar 7, 2014 at 20:42

Cedric Guindon

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1 Comment

TDsouza Over a year ago

I'm still a learner and am still learning PHP. I haven't gotten into ajax yet, else I'd definitely give it a try. Thanks for your reply though. :)

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