Web Server Access to Account

[funkyGibbon]

Hi, I have set myself a little project in PHP. In principle it seemed easy and the idea was that the php page I created and uploaded to my web server would access and read data from a remote web page using line-by-line regular expressions. This part of the project I believe I had achieved, but I couldnt get the thing to actually work - until I realised my problem:

The specific pages I am trying to read are a part of a facebook app and while these pages do not hold any private information, facebook (and as a result the app) does not allow access to these pages until you are logged in to an account.

My question is this: Is it possible to code or control my web server to that it can log into fabebook automatically (even if it has to be my own personal account). I can achieve this on my own computer by using the 'remember me' options when I log into facebook which I assume stores cookies locally - I am wondering how I can achieve the same results with a web server.

Possible ? Or any alternitive solutions out there ? I would apreciate some feed back.

Regards,
SG

[funkyGibbon]

Okay, I managed to crack the access part... Now problem 2

I cant get the regular expressions to match the lines, I have tried breaking it down into small chunks and taking it all in one go and I just cant get the info extracted!

I am essentially reading a repeating line as follows:

<tr><td class="rankingrank">A_NUMBER.</td><td class="rankingimg"><a href="index.php?id=B_NUMBER" title="C_WORD" onclick="(new Image()).src = '/ajax/ct.php?app_id=6185137361&amp;action_type=3&amp;post_form_id=0915a61035bf57190b23a2ee3d41e138&amp;position=3&amp;' + Math.random();return true;"><img uid="1060585185" size="square" linked="false" style="height: 16px; width: 16px;" src="http://profile.ak.facebook.com/v226/479/73/q1060585185_9577.jpg" alt="Text" title="Text" /></a></td><td class="rankinguser"><a href="alliance.php?al=D_NUMBER" title="E_WORD" onclick="(new Image()).src = '/ajax/ct.php?app_id=6185137361&amp;action_type=3&amp;post_form_id=0915a61035bf57190b23a2ee3d41e138&amp;position=3&amp;' + Math.random();return true;">[F_WORD]</a> <a href="index.php?id=B_NUMBER" onclick="(new Image()).src = '/ajax/ct.php?app_id=6185137361&amp;action_type=3&amp;post_form_id=0915a61035bf57190b23a2ee3d41e138&amp;position=3&amp;' + Math.random();return true;">C_WORD</a></td><td class="rankingstat">G_NUMBER</td></tr>

And I am trying to extract the following:
A_NUMBER = Simple number
B_NUMBER = Simple number
C_WORD = Letters/numbers/spaces/asci/foreign characters - Max 100 chars
D_NUMBER = Simple number
E_WORD = Letters/numbers/spaces/asci/foreign characters - Max 100 chars
F_WORD = Letters/numbers/spaces/asci/foreign characters - Max 4 chars - Min 0
G_NUMBER = Simple number

You will notice that some areas I am trying to capture are repeated.

Most of the spare parts of the line expression needs to be flexible as parts can change, like the serial codes, images - but the table structure and class tags will not change and this is what I have been trying to anchor my expressions from.

In its current state I have my script broken down into chunks:

Capturing A_NUMBER

preg_match('(class="rankingrank">([0-9]+)\.)', $line, $data)

Capturing C_WORD & G_NUMBER

preg_match('(>(.+?)<\/a>\<\/td><td class="rankingstat">([0-9]+)<\/td>)', $line, $data)

Capturing D_NUMBER & E_WORD

preg_match('(<a href="alliance\.php\?al=([0-9]+?)" title\="(.+?)" onclick=")', $line, $data)

These are capturing some parts correctly, but failing on a majority of lines and capturing too much of the lines. I tried adding the ? greedy flag with no better luck.

Can anyone highlight where I am going wrong ? Or point me in the direction of a good regex creator maybe ?

Thanks in advance :)

[funkyGibbon]

Okay a cracked it now. I found a VERY good web site for working on reg-ex commands and thought I would post it up here incase anyone at all is interested :P

http://gskinner.com/RegExr/