PHP file_get_html on Pinterest - Some seriously weird behaviour - php

Question

Trying to scrape a bit of basic account info from Pinterest pages (no I'm not scraping pins before I get accused of using this maliciously, it's simply a competitor research tool).
Some accounts work fine with file_get_html, others return completely blank objects and I can't figure out why. I've built the below test code with completely random pages of different sizes to try and do some testing... still no further forward.
It uses Simple HTML DOM and here is my test code trying to figure out why some aren't working.
$pinterestUrl1 = "https://uk.pinterest.com/sfashionality/";
$pinterestUrl2 = "https://uk.pinterest.com/serenebathrooms/";
$pinterestUrl3 = "https://uk.pinterest.com/jenstanbrook/";
$pinterestUrl4 = "https://uk.pinterest.com/homebaseuk/";
$pinterestUrl5 = "https://uk.pinterest.com/thedoifter/";
$pinterestUrl6 = "https://uk.pinterest.com/coolshitibuy/";
$html1 = file_get_html($pinterestUrl1);
$html2 = file_get_html($pinterestUrl2);
$html3 = file_get_html($pinterestUrl3);
$html4 = file_get_html($pinterestUrl4);
$html5 = file_get_html($pinterestUrl5);
$html6 = file_get_html($pinterestUrl6);
echo $pinterestUrl1 . " - "; if (is_object($html1)) { echo "Returns object okay<br/>"; } else { echo "Failed<br/>"; };
echo $pinterestUrl2 . " - "; if (is_object($html2)) { echo "Returns object okay<br/>"; } else { echo "Failed<br/>"; };
echo $pinterestUrl3 . " - "; if (is_object($html3)) { echo "Returns object okay<br/>"; } else { echo "Failed<br/>"; };
echo $pinterestUrl4 . " - "; if (is_object($html4)) { echo "Returns object okay<br/>"; } else { echo "Failed<br/>"; };
echo $pinterestUrl5 . " - "; if (is_object($html5)) { echo "Returns object okay<br/>"; } else { echo "Failed<br/>"; };
echo $pinterestUrl6 . " - "; if (is_object($html6)) { echo "Returns object okay<br/>"; } else { echo "Failed<br/>"; };
Result:
https://uk.pinterest.com/sfashionality/ - Returns object okay
https://uk.pinterest.com/serenebathrooms/ - Returns object okay
https://uk.pinterest.com/jenstanbrook - Failed
https://uk.pinterest.com/homebaseuk/ - Failed
https://uk.pinterest.com/thedoifter/ - Returns object okay
https://uk.pinterest.com/coolshitibuy/ - Returns object okay
I can't see any reasons why some of these return objects and others don't... and because it's blank I don't even know where to start debugging this kind of thing.
Any ideas at all on this one? Thanks

Answer 1

Simple HTML DOM parser has constant MAX_FILE_SIZE with value 600000 and URLs that you are requesting have slightly more HTML.
You can define MAX_FILE_SIZE with some larger value before including lib, this will produce a PHP notice but HTML will be processed. Code I have tested this with:
<?php
define('MAX_FILE_SIZE', 6000000); //Will produce notice, but we need to define it
include_once './simplehtmldom_1_5/simple_html_dom.php';
$urls = array(
'https://uk.pinterest.com/sfashionality/',
'https://uk.pinterest.com/serenebathrooms/',
'https://uk.pinterest.com/jenstanbrook/',
'https://uk.pinterest.com/homebaseuk/',
'https://uk.pinterest.com/thedoifter/',
'https://uk.pinterest.com/coolshitibuy/',
);
foreach ($urls as $url) {
$content = file_get_contents($url);
$html = str_get_html($content);
echo $url . ' - ';
if (is_object($html)) {
echo 'Returns object okay<br/>';
} else {
echo 'Failed<br/>';
};
}