capture html data between tags

[sdowney1]

I wrote a VB6 app that uses a web browser control to create an inbuilt instance of IE.

I then used that to navigate to a LOC web page, do a search and collect MARC tag data.

 

I was wondering how you could do this in PHP.?

I put up some attachments that show this working in VB6.

 

The searchable web page that returns results is here

http://www.loc.gov/cgi-bin/zgate?ACTION=INIT&FORM_HOST_PORT=/prod/www/data/z3950/locils2.html,z3950.loc.gov,7090

 

So you do a search for something.

LOC gives you a list.

You click on an item in the list where it says 'more on this record'

then you click 'tagged display'

And that is the data you want to have collected into your variable.

I created a Download Icon on the web browser control that turns green when the data is displayed.

 

Do you somehow create your own web browser instance?

or? I am new to PHP and have figured out a few things.

I created this here in PHP

http://www.sdowney717.byethost16.com/mysearch2first.php

 

 

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[sdowney1]

all I come up with is some sort of page scraping scheme. BUT unless your in control of the web browser, this idea of interacting with the LOC search site using just PHP I feel wont work.

[sdowney1]

I suppose you could have someone select all copy, then paste the results into a textarea box on a form and have PHP process it. But that seems clumsy.