README.md

ScraperWiki PHP libraries

This directory contains miscellaneous PHP libraries which ScraperWiki Classic used, and which aren't packaged in PECL or PEAR. It's checked out and added to the include_path on new ScraperWiki.

You can just use it like this:

require 'simple_html_dom.php'
require 'excel_reader2.php'

The symlinks, for example to simple_html_dom.php, in scraperwiki/ are for backwards compatibility with ScraperWiki Classic scrapers.

API reference:

scraperwiki::scrape($url)

Scrape a given $url and return the response content as a string.

scraperwiki::save_sqlite($unique_keys, $data, [$table_name])

Save data into a SQLite database (created automatically in the background).

$unique_keys (required) should be an array() of one or more column names.

$data (required) should either be a single row to save (as an array() of strings and/or numbers), or a list of multiple rows to save in one go (as an array() of array()s)

$table_name is optional. If unspecified, the default of "swdata" will be used. You can pass any string you like here to save your data into a new table name.

scraperwiki:save_var($name, $value)

Save a given variable $name with a given $value to the datastore.

scraperwiki:get_var($name, [$default])

Retrieve a given variable $name from the datastore.

If you pass an optional $default value, this will be returned in the case that the given variable $name could not be found in the datastore.