Scraping data from amazon - php

Question

I'm aware that there is an amazon API for pulling their data but I'm just trying to learn to scrape for my own knowledge and pulling data from amazon seems like a good test.
<?php
ini_set('display_errors',1);
ini_set('display_startup_errors',1);
error_reporting(-1);
include('../includes/simple_html_dom.php');
$html = file_get_html('http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00AZYBFGY/ref=s9_simh_gw_p86_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1MP0FXRF8V70NWAN3ZWW&pf_r$')
foreach($html->find('a-section') as $element) {
echo $element->plaintext . '<br />';
}
echo $ret;
?>
All I'm trying to do is pull the product description from the link but I'm not sure why it's working. I'm not getting any errors or any data at all, really.

Answer 1

The class for the Product Description is simply productDescriptionWrapper so in your sample code use that css selector
foreach($html->find('.productDescriptionWrapper') as $element) {
echo $element->plaintext . '<br />';
}
simplehtmldom uses css selectors very similar to jQuery. so if you want all divs say ->find('div') if you want all anchors with a class of 'hotProduct' say ->find('a.hotProduct') so on and so forth

Answer 2

It doesn't work because the product description is being added by JavaScript into an iFrame.

Answer 3

You first can check if there is an HTML taken from the Amazon. It might block your request.
$url = "https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00AZYBFGY/ref=s9_simh_gw_p86_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1MP0FXRF8V70NWAN3ZWW&pf_r$"
$htmlContent = file_get_contents($url);
echo $htmlContent;
$html = str_get_html($htmlContent);
Note, the https://, you have http://, maybe that is why you get nothing.
Once you get HTML, you can go forward.
Try different selectors:
foreach($html->find('div[id=productDescription]')) as $element) {
echo $element->plaintext . '<br />';
}
foreach($html->find('div[id=content]')) as $element) {
echo $element->plaintext . '<br />';
}
foreach($html->find('div[id=feature-bullets]')) as $element) {
echo $element->plaintext . '<br />';
}
It should display the page itself, maybe with some missing CSS.
If the HTML is in place. You can try those xpaths