PHP XML http response in an array - php

I am a newbie in PHP. I am making a call to an http api using wget (the hosting site doesn't offer http_get). The call returns an xml set when do it manually. But it appears that my wget call is putting the response into an array.
I am unable to access the array and not sure where to go from here.
Below is my code. FYI -- The first 4 elements of the xml play_by_play object are: id, visitor, home, status.
<?php
exec('wget http://api.sportsdatallc.org/mlb-t3/pbp/99a0f209-2c69-49a4-99f9-8aebdf55b6e9.xml?api_key=API_KEY', $array);
//print_r(array_values($array));
echo $array["play_by_play"][0]->id;
?>
I appreciate any assistance with this!
Thanks

When you use exec(), the 2nd parameter ($array) will be filled with each line of the output. That's not what you want. That's why you can't access your values, it's just an aray of strings, not a parsed XML file.
I suggest you use shell_exec() instead.
$xml = shell_exec('wget http://your.xml.file');
Then you can use an XML parser on $xml.
I don't know why you're using exec here when PHP has file downloading built-in. http_get() is not a part of the PHP core, that's why your hosting doesn't offer it. If they let you use exec(), then I'll assume they'll let you use the built-in file_get_contents().
$xml = file_get_contents('http://your.xml.file');

Related

How to execute python script with curl from php?

I want to execute python script with post data and get result from there using curl in php. If anyone have done this kind of functionality then please help. I have searched a lot but didn't get anything.
This is my python script path
cgi-bin/interactive.py
And i want to pass title=abc as post data.
I have done it with shell_exec in php file,
$command = escapeshellcmd('cgi-bin/interactive.py test');
$output = shell_exec($command);
echo $output;
But in this i am facing issue with sys.argv to fetch argument in python file.
Is it possible to pass argument with key=value with shell_exec? If yes then it can solve my problem otherwise i need to call with curl post data.
Thanks in advance!
To do advanced parsing of shell arguments you can use getopt or argparse modules. They are highly configurable and flexible.
Passing post data via shell arguments is, however, not proper as per the CGI spec (if this is supposed to be a true CGI application). Post data comes from stdin in CGI, so in your Python program you can read in the HTTP response like regular user input, and then parse out the POST data. See this thread for more info.

file_get_contents not working when parameters included in a relative url

I am trying to create a simple web service that will give a result depending on parameters passed.
I would like to use file_get_contents but am having difficulties getting it to work. I have researched many of the other questions relating to the file_get_contents issues but none have been exactly the situation I seem to having.
I have a webpage:
example.com/xdirectory/index.php
I am attempting to get the value of the output of that page using:
file_get_contents(urlencode('https://www.example.com/xdirectory/index.php'));*
That does not work due to some issue with the https. Since the requesting page and the target are both on the same server I try again with a relative path:
file_get_contents(urlencode('../xdirectory/index.php'));
That does work and retrieves the html output of the page as expected.
Now if I try:
file_get_contents(urlencode('../xdirectory/index.php?id=100'));
The html output is (should be): Hello World.
The result retrieved by the command is blank. I check the error log and have an error:
[Fri Dec 04 12:22:54 2015] [error] [client 10.50.0.12] PHP Warning: file_get_contents(../xdirectory/index.php?id=100): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /var/www/html/inventory/index.php on line 40, referer: https://www.example.com/inventory/index.php
The php.ini has these set:
allow_url_fopen, On local and On master
allow_url_include, On local and On master
Since I can get the content properly using only the url and NOT when using it with parameters I'm guessing that there is an issue with parameters and file_get_contents. I cannot find any notice against using parameters in the documentation so am at a loss and asking for your help.
Additional Notes:
I have tried this using urlencode and not using urlencode. Also, I am not trying to retrieve a file but dynamically created html output depending on parameters passed (just as much of the html output at index.php is dynamically created).
** There are several folks giving me all kind of good suggestions and it has been suggested that I must use the full blown absolute path. I just completed an experiment using file_get_contents to get http://www.duckduckgo.com, that worked, and then with a urlencoded parameter (http://www.duckduckgo.com/?q=php+is+cool)... that worked too.
It was when I tried the secure side of things, https://www.duckduckgo.com that it failed, and, with the same error message in the log as I have been receiving with my other queries.
So, now I have a refined question and I may need to update the question title to reflect it.
Does anyone know how to get a parameterized relative url to work with file_get_contents? (i.e. 'file_get_contents(urlencode('../xdirectory/index.php?id=' . urlencode('100'))); )
Unless you provide a full-blown absolute protocol://host/path-type url to file_get_contents, it WILL assume you're dealing with a local filesystem path.
That means your urlencode() version is wrongly doing
file_get_contents('..%2Fxdirectory%2Findex.php');
and you are HIGHLY unlikely to have a hidden file named ..%2Fetc....
call url with domain, try this
file_get_contents('https://www.example.com/inventory/index.php?id=100');
From reading your comments and additional notes, I think you don't want file_get_contents but you want include.
see How to execute and get content of a .php file in a variable?
Several of these answers give you useful pointers on what it looks like you're trying to achieve.
file_get_contents will return the contents of a file rather than the output of a file, unless it's a URL, but as you seem to have other issues with passing the URI absolutely....
So; you can construct something like:
$_GET['id'] = 100;
//this will pass the variable into the index.php file to use as if it was
// a GET value passed in the URI.
$output = include $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/file/address/index.php";
unset($_GET['id']);
//$output holds the HTML code as a string,
The above feels hacky trying to incorporate $_GET values into the index.php page, but if you can edit the index.php page you can use plain PHP passed values and also get the output returned with a specific return $output; statement at the end of the included file.
It has been two years since I used PHP so I am just speculating about what I might try in your situation.
Instead of trying fetching the parsed file contents with arguments as a query string, I might try to set the variables directly within the php script and then include it (that is if the framework you use allows this).
To achive this I would use pattern:
ob_start -> set the variable, include the file that uses the variable -> ob_get_contents -> ob_end_clean
It is like opening your terminal and running the php file with arguments.
Anyway, I would not be surprised if there are better ways to achieve the same results. Happy hacking :o)
EDIT:
I like to emphasize that I am just speculating. I don't know if there are any security issues with this approach. You could of course ask and see if anyone knows here on stackoverflow.
EDIT2:
Hmm, scrap what I said last. I would check if you can use argv instead.
'argv' Array of arguments passed to the script. When the script is run on the command line, this gives C-style access to the command line parameters. When called via the GET method, this will contain the query string. http://php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.server.php
Then you just call your php script locally but without the query mark indicator "?". This way you can use the php interpreter without the server.
This is likely to be the most general solution because you can also use argv for get requests if I am understanding the manual correctly.

How to read GTFS protocol buffer in PHP?

I have a GTFS protocol buffer message (VehiclePosition.pb), and the corresponding protocol format (gtfs-realtime.proto), I would like to read the message in PHP alone (is that even possible?).
I looked at Google's python tutorial https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/pythontutorial and encoding documentation https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/encoding and https://github.com/maxious/ACTBus-ui/tree/master/lib/Protobuf-PHP, but I am having a really hard time conceptualizing what is going on. I think I understand that gtfs-realtime.php is a compiled instruction set of the encoding defined in gtfs-realtime.proto (please correct me if I am wrong), but I have no clue how to get it to decode VehiclePosition.pb. Also, what are the dependencies of gtfs-realtime.php (or the python equivalent for that matter)? Is there anything else I have to compile myself or anything that is not a simple php script if all I want to do is read VehiclePosition.pb?
Thanks.
edmonscommerce and Julian are on the right track.
However, I've gone down the same path and I've found that the PHP implementation of Protocol Buffers is cumbersome (especially in the case of NYCT's MTA feed).
Alternative Method (Command Line + JSON):
If you're comfortable with command line tools and JSON, I wrote a standalone tool that converts GTFS-realtime into simple JSON: https://github.com/harrytruong/gtfs_realtime_json
Just download (no install), and run: gtfs_realtime_json <feed_url>
Here's a sample JSON output.
To use this in PHP, just put gtfs_realtime_json in the same directory as your scripts, and run the following:
<?php
$json = exec('./gtfs_realtime_json "http://developer.mbta.com/lib/GTRTFS/Alerts/VehiclePositions.pb"');
$feed = json_decode($json, TRUE);
var_dump($feed);
You can use the official tool: https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs-realtime/code-samples#php
It was released very recently. I've been using it for a few days and works like a charm.
I would assume something along the lines of this snippet:
<?php
require_once 'DrSlump\Protobuf.php';
use DrSlump\Protobuf;
$data = file_get_contents('data.pb');
$person = new Tutorial\Person($data);
echo $person->getName();
as taken from the man page: http://drslump.github.io/Protobuf-PHP/protobuf-php.3.html
Before that step, I think you need to generate your PHP classes using the CLI tool as described here: http://drslump.github.io/Protobuf-PHP/protoc-gen-php.1.html
so something along the lines of:
protoc-gen-php gtfs-realtime.proto
Sorry Harry Truong, I tried your executable but it returns always NULL.
What I am doing wrong?
Edit: The problem is that I have no permission to execute in my server. Thanks for your executable.

How do I use external JSON...?

spent a few hours trying to figure this out, but cannot for the life of me figure out what's going wrong.
All I'm trying to do is load this:
https://recruit.zoho.com/ats/EmbedResult.hr?jodigest=2cV.Sr2As6VxhLMxQGuTNij*g.Fb3J7ysduDs.AC9sU-&atslocale=en_GB&rawdata=json
which I believe is json, into either javascript/jquery or php and use the data.
I've looked into jsonp, followed some tutorials, used some demos as templates and just can't get the above data to work.
If anyone can shed some light it would be much appreciated. It really shouldn't be this complicated, but I don't know what's going wrong.
Yep, that's JSON. The site may not support JSONP, so you're gonna have to use PHP to do this.
This is untested, but should work.
<?php
$url = 'https://recruit.zoho.com/ats/EmbedResult.hr?jodigest=2cV.Sr2As6VxhLMxQGuTNij*g.Fb3J7ysduDs.AC9sU-&atslocale=en_GB&rawdata=json';
$JSON = file_get_contents($url);
// echo the JSON (you can echo this to JavaScript to use it there)
echo $JSON;
// You can decode it to process it in PHP
$data = json_decode($JSON);
var_dump($data);
?>
JSONP relies on the server to return a JSONP formatted response. Basically, to use JSONP the server needs to return a JSON string wrapped in a function invocation ({"foo":1} becomes func({"foo":1})).
As the server your using doesn't return a JSONP response, you cannot use JSONP, you can only use JSON.
This is a shame, as JSON cannot be used x-domain due to the same origin policy (SOP). Therefore, the only option you have is to use a proxy server, which retrieves the JSON from the server, and either gives it to you in JSONP (see Yahoo Pipes), or which is on the same domain as the requested page (write a simple PHP script to get the file using file_get_contents() and then echo the output), in which case it can return the JSON.
I breifly looked at the requirements and it looks like you need an API key as well as an account. I saw that the site provides services for XML and JSON only. It looks to be fairly well documented.

Ajax from within PHP

I know AJAX will not be what it is called, but I am looking for something similar that can be done from within PHP itself (not using javascript).
Basically, as the PHP is creating the page, I want to query an API to gather some information that will be used on the current page. Is this possible, and if so what would be the best method?
Thanks
You can use fopen or curl:
Here is an example to open a connection to twitters API, read the public timeline and output parts of it.
<?php
$fp = fopen("http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/public_timeline.json?count=3&include_entities=false","r");
while($data = fgets($fp))
{
$json .= $data;
}
$arr = json_decode($json);
print_r($arr);
?>
You are probably wanting curl.
http://php.net/manual/en/book.curl.php
If you're talking about a remote HTTP API, you would utilize cURL at runtime. It's basically PHP's way of accessing information across domains.
The above can be a little overwhelming - check out the simple example page to get you started. If available, I suggest working with cURL from the command line, as there's quite a few options on there. It's a good way to get familiar with the command and different options available.

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