Return some content from external page.

Dows it even sound logical?

[achshar]

alright here's the situation..
i add movie info and cast&crew to my site.. so i usually have to visit a number of sites and check for any new movie the i might have skipped the notice..

and here's the idea..
I was wondering if i could get the content of a bunch of pages with static url.. (maybe home-pages) of other sites with file_get_contents and use preg match to get the value of some div with any id.. which would include the movie names.. and i could use explode them and look if any one of them does not exist in my database..

i wasnt even sure if this is a legal or its even possible.. coding is something i could do myself.. but i mean no harm.. i just want to avoid going every site individually, every day.. how does that sound?

[enigma1]

Yes you could, fsockopen, sockets, curl etc are functions to communicate with other servers. IMO though you should go after feeds other sites provide because the HTML pages often change and difficult to track and process.

As of the legality, is the same when spiders crawl your site. Now what you do with the content your retrieve is another matter. If you claim it yourself then that can put you into trouble.

Is it useful? I am not sure, but plain copy/paste does not generate original content.

[achshar]

Yes you could, fsockopen, sockets, curl etc are functions to communicate with other servers.

well i guess i skipped that part already as i had been working on it and it is almost ready.. all the testing is done..

IMO though you should go after feeds other sites provide because the HTML pages often change and difficult to track and process

unfortunately.. it gives feed for latest inserted movie not the ones with approaching release dates.. and i dont really mind changing regular expression from preg_match once or twice a month..

but plain copy/paste does not generate original content.

oh i guess i made it sound like so but actually i just want approaching movie names.. and nothing else.. no copy/pase of any kind.. i thought i could skip going every site i reckon..
plus it will be on my admin pages, visible only and only to me. its like just have to visit my page once a day and i am done with all my work.. it would just alert me that i dont have this move in my db..

i hope it does not sound stupid. i usually come up with bizarre ideas :(.