Data sweep of website

[d0nny]

Is there a way of auto-reading a website with data on it (that changes) so I can then store it (or update my data based on the data I glean) and then use on my pages?
Obviously the easiest answer would be some RSS feed, but the site doesn't offer RSS.
The site would need to be parsed in some manner so I only got the data (figures) I need, but is there such a way of doing this?

 

[jpadie]

yes.
always assuming that you have the permission of the site owner to screen scrape.
use file_get_contents() or some similar file function or cURL to capture the page that you are looking for.
have a routine to parse the captured text for the information you want,
check whether there have been changes and, if so, update your database.

make the whole thing happen periodically by setting a cron job.