How to get HTML elements from a file using PHP - php

Question

Currently I am using file_get_contents to get contents of an HTML page I have.
if(file_exists($fileName)) {
echo "file exists!";
$current = file_get_contents("./docs/page1.html");
echo $current;
} else {
echo "file doesn't exist";
file_put_content($fileName, "testing creating a new page");
}
when the HTML file exists, I store the content using file_get_contents in variable $current and then echo current. However, nothing displays. Just a black page (which I'm guessing is the css in the html page)
If I can't spit out the page, is there a way to extract each element of the html page (divs, etc)?

Answer 1

file_put_content is not a function. Try file_put_contents
Also look at the changes i did to your script. It will give you information if the file can be created/read or not.
<?php
$fileName = './docs/page1.html';
if($current = file_get_contents($fileName)){
echo "file exists!";
echo $current;
} else {
echo "file doesn't exist";
if (file_put_contents($fileName, "testing creating a new page")){
echo 'created a new file!';
} else {
echo 'Error, couldnt create file! Maybe I dont have write permissions?';
}
}
?>
I tested this script, and it works unless it doesnt have file permissions. So make sure you set file permissions on the folder containing the file as well.

Answer 2

You are showing the page, but are probably lacking content on the page that uses relative paths, such as CSS and images.
If you wish to only use part of the page, I suggest looking into DOMDocument.
http://www.php.net/manual/en/domdocument.loadhtml.php