Use PHP to get embed src page information? - php

Question

Sort of a weird question.
From 4shared video site, I get the embed code like the following:
<embed src="http://www.4shared.com/embed/436595676/acfa8f75" width="420" height="320" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed>
Now, if I access the url in that embed src, the video is loaded up and the URL of the page is changed with information about the video.
I am wondering if there is any way for me to access that info using PHP? I tried file_get_contents but it gives me lots of weird characters.
So, can I use PHP to load the embed url and get the information present in the address bar?
Thanks for all your help! :)

Answer 1

Yes, e.g. with the curl-library of php. This one will handle the redirect-headers from the server, which result in the new/real url of the video.
Here's a sample code:
<?php
// create a new cURL resource
$ch = curl_init();
// set URL and other appropriate options
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://www.4shared.com/embed/436595676/acfa8f75");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_NOBODY, 1);
// we want to further handle the content, so return it
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
// grab URL and pass it to the browser
$result = curl_exec($ch);
// did we get a good result?
if (!$result)
die ("error getting url");
// if we got a redirection http-code, split the content in
// lines and search for the Location-header.
$location = null;
if ((int)(curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE)/100) == 3) {
$lines = explode("\n", $result);
foreach ($lines as $line) {
list($head, $value) = explode(":", $line, 2);
if ($head == 'Location') {
$location = trim($value);
break;
}
}
}
if ($location == null)
die("no redirect found in header");
// close cURL resource, and free up system resources
curl_close($ch);
// your location is now in here.
var_dump($location);
?>