Importing external site's code?

[synotic]

Is there a way that I can load the contents of a given URL and be returned the source code as a string, which I can work with?

Specifically I'm trying to update a page every minute or so with the output of a PHP file I made, I would like to be able to just do get the PHP file's output and the manipulate it as I want, on the page. Is this possible? Thanks :)

[adni18]

You can retrieve URLs in PHP and Perl, but there are restrictions build in to javascript to stop you from retrieving source code from domains other than your own.

[synotic]

Thanks for the reply.

That's actually precisely what I'm trying to do: I want to retrieve the output a local PHP file on the same domain. I just don't want to constantly reload the page. So.. how do I do that? :)

P.S. I have looked around but I haven't been able to find anything of use.

[jollymcfats]

XMLHttpRequest will do the trick.

[synotic]

XMLHttpRequest will do the trick.

Thanks for the suggestion; I thought that I might be able to use it, but I thought it might be overkill—I figured there was another, simpler function. After a little bit of messing around with some examples, I was able to get it to work. My page now updates every 30 seconds (or whenever I want) without having to reload the page. I'll have to play with this some more :)