NAME:

Snoopy - the PHP net client v1.2.4

SYNOPSIS:

include "Snoopy.class.php";
$snoopy = new Snoopy;

$snoopy->fetchtext("http://www.php.net/");
print $snoopy->results;
$snoopy->fetchlinks("http://www.phpbuilder.com/");
print $snoopy->results;
$submit_url = "http://lnk.ispi.net/texis/scripts/msearch/netsearch.html";
$submit_vars["q"] = "amiga";
$submit_vars["submit"] = "Search!";
$submit_vars["searchhost"] = "Altavista";
$snoopy->submit($submit_url,$submit_vars);
print $snoopy->results;
$snoopy->maxframes=5;
$snoopy->fetch("http://www.ispi.net/");
echo "
\n";
echo htmlentities($snoopy->results[0]); 
echo htmlentities($snoopy->results[1]); 
echo htmlentities($snoopy->results[2]); 
echo "
\n";

$snoopy->fetchform("http://www.altavista.com");
print $snoopy->results;

DESCRIPTION:

What is Snoopy?

Snoopy is a PHP class that simulates a web browser. It automates the
task of retrieving web page content and posting forms, for example.
Some of Snoopy's features:

easily fetch the contents of a web page
easily fetch the text from a web page (strip html tags)
easily fetch the the links from a web page
supports proxy hosts
supports basic user/pass authentication
supports setting user_agent, referer, cookies and header content
supports browser redirects, and controlled depth of redirects
expands fetched links to fully qualified URLs (default)
easily submit form data and retrieve the results
supports following html frames (added v0.92)
supports passing cookies on redirects (added v0.92)

REQUIREMENTS:

Snoopy requires PHP with PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions),
which should be PHP 3.0.9 and up. For read timeout support, it requires
PHP 4 Beta 4 or later. Snoopy was developed and tested with PHP 3.0.12.

CLASS METHODS:

fetch($URI)



This is the method used for fetching the contents of a web page.
$URI is the fully qualified URL of the page to fetch.
The results of the fetch are stored in $this->results.
If you are fetching frames, then $this->results
contains each frame fetched in an array.
fetchtext($URI)
This behaves exactly like fetch() except that it only returns
the text from the page, stripping out html tags and other
irrelevant data.        
fetchform($URI)
This behaves exactly like fetch() except that it only returns
the form elements from the page, stripping out html tags and other
irrelevant data.        
fetchlinks($URI)
This behaves exactly like fetch() except that it only returns
the links from the page. By default, relative links are
converted to their fully qualified URL form.
submit($URI,$formvars)
This submits a form to the specified $URI. $formvars is an
array of the form variables to pass.
submittext($URI,$formvars)
This behaves exactly like submit() except that it only returns
the text from the page, stripping out html tags and other
irrelevant data.        
submitlinks($URI)
This behaves exactly like submit() except that it only returns
the links from the page. By default, relative links are
converted to their fully qualified URL form.

CLASS VARIABLES: (default value in parenthesis)

$host           the host to connect to
$port           the port to connect to
$proxy_host     the proxy host to use, if any
$proxy_port     the proxy port to use, if any
$agent          the user agent to masqerade as (Snoopy v0.1)
$referer        referer information to pass, if any
$cookies        cookies to pass if any
$rawheaders     other header info to pass, if any
$maxredirs      maximum redirects to allow. 0=none allowed. (5)
$offsiteok      whether or not to allow redirects off-site. (true)
$expandlinks    whether or not to expand links to fully qualified URLs (true)
$user           authentication username, if any
$pass           authentication password, if any
$accept         http accept types (image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, */*)
$error          where errors are sent, if any
$response_code  responde code returned from server
$headers        headers returned from server
$maxlength      max return data length
$read_timeout   timeout on read operations (requires PHP 4 Beta 4+)
                set to 0 to disallow timeouts
$timed_out      true if a read operation timed out (requires PHP 4 Beta 4+)
$maxframes      number of frames we will follow
$status         http status of fetch
$temp_dir       temp directory that the webserver can write to. (/tmp)
$curl_path      system path to cURL binary, set to false if none

EXAMPLES:

Example:    fetch a web page and display the return headers and
            the contents of the page (html-escaped):

include "Snoopy.class.php";
$snoopy = new Snoopy;
$snoopy->user = "joe";
$snoopy->pass = "bloe";
if($snoopy->fetch("http://www.slashdot.org/"))
{
    echo "response code: ".$snoopy->response_code."
\n";
    while(list($key,$val) = each($snoopy->headers))
        echo $key.": ".$val."
\n";
    echo "
\n";
echo "</p><pre>".htmlspecialchars($snoopy-&gt;results)."</pre>\n";
}
else
    echo "error fetching document: ".$snoopy->error."\n";
Example:    submit a form and print out the result headers
            and html-escaped page:
include "Snoopy.class.php";
$snoopy = new Snoopy;
$submit_url = "http://lnk.ispi.net/texis/scripts/msearch/netsearch.html";
$submit_vars["q"] = "amiga";
$submit_vars["submit"] = "Search!";
$submit_vars["searchhost"] = "Altavista";
if($snoopy->submit($submit_url,$submit_vars))
{
    while(list($key,$val) = each($snoopy->headers))
        echo $key.": ".$val."
\n";
    echo "
\n";
echo "</p><pre>".htmlspecialchars($snoopy-&gt;results)."</pre>\n";
}
else
    echo "error fetching document: ".$snoopy->error."\n";
Example:    showing functionality of all the variables:
include "Snoopy.class.php";
$snoopy = new Snoopy;
$snoopy->proxy_host = "my.proxy.host";
$snoopy->proxy_port = "8080";
$snoopy->agent = "(compatible; MSIE 4.01; MSN 2.5; AOL 4.0; Windows 98)";
$snoopy->referer = "http://www.microsnot.com/";
$snoopy->cookies["SessionID"] = 238472834723489l;
$snoopy->cookies["favoriteColor"] = "RED";
$snoopy->rawheaders["Pragma"] = "no-cache";
$snoopy->maxredirs = 2;
$snoopy->offsiteok = false;
$snoopy->expandlinks = false;
$snoopy->user = "joe";
$snoopy->pass = "bloe";
if($snoopy->fetchtext("http://www.phpbuilder.com"))
{
    while(list($key,$val) = each($snoopy->headers))
        echo $key.": ".$val."
\n";
    echo "
\n";
echo "</p><pre>".htmlspecialchars($snoopy-&gt;results)."</pre>\n";
}
else
    echo "error fetching document: ".$snoopy->error."\n";
Example:    fetched framed content and display the results
include "Snoopy.class.php";
$snoopy = new Snoopy;
$snoopy->maxframes = 5;
if($snoopy->fetch("http://www.ispi.net/"))
{
    echo "
".htmlspecialchars($snoopy->results[0])."
\n";
    echo "
".htmlspecialchars($snoopy->results[1])."
\n";
    echo "
".htmlspecialchars($snoopy->results[2])."
\n";
}
else
    echo "error fetching document: ".$snoopy->error."\n";

COPYRIGHT: Copyright(c) 1999,2000 ispi. All rights reserved. This software is released under the GNU General Public License. Please read the disclaimer at the top of the Snoopy.class.php file.

THANKS: Special Thanks to: Peter Sorger [email protected] help fixing a redirect bug Andrei Zmievski [email protected] implementing time out functionality Patric Sandelin [email protected] help with fetchform debugging Carmelo [email protected] misc bug fixes with frames