There are three ways to access a website data. One is through a browser, the other is using a API (if the site provides one) and the last by parsing the web pages through code. The last one also known as Web Scraping is a technique of extracting information from websites using specially coded programs. In this post we will take a quick look at writing a simple scraper using the simplehtmldom library.

His three (really more) step process guides yo through installing the library, installing Firebug and some example code to create your first scraper - an example that pulls some of the "Featured Links" from the Google search results sidebar. The second example illustrates grabbing the list of the table of contents from the most recent issue of Wired.

I had borrowed a Perl Hacks book from and friend and really liked it, it was great! It had a lot of practical things as well as some fun things. I expected the same from PHP Hacks and I was not disappointed!

She links to both the table of contents and the sample chapter to give you an idea of the feel of the book. There's two main sections in the review covering both aspects of the book - the Practical Stuff and the Fun Stuff. Of course, no book is perfect, so there is one thing she mentions that wasn't really worked into the book, but you'll need to read the review to find out what.