{"id":680,"date":"2013-02-14T21:36:50","date_gmt":"2013-02-15T02:36:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/?p=680"},"modified":"2013-04-29T22:52:50","modified_gmt":"2013-04-30T02:52:50","slug":"how-to-retrieve-webpage-meta-tags-with-phps-get_meta_tags","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/how-to-retrieve-webpage-meta-tags-with-phps-get_meta_tags\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Retrieve Webpage Meta Tags With PHP’s get_meta_tags"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know that the burning question on all you Web geeks’ minds, the one that keeps you up at night, is “How can I \"\"<\/a>grab the meta content from a website using PHP?”<\/strong> Either that, or “Does a duck’s quack echo?<\/a>” For purposes of this discussion, though, I’m gonna’ go with the former.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>As any Web guy or gal worth their salt knows, meta tags define each webpage’s title, description, and much more. <\/strong>They’re used as a webpage summary in search engine listings when they spider your site, and help to categorize your content. (Did I lose you? Go back to Meta Tags 101<\/a> and 102<\/a> before continuing.) Why would you want to retrieve them? Maybe you want to create your own website directory<\/strong>; this would be a quick way to pop out a nice website list without a ton of cut-and-paste. It could also help you spy on your competitors<\/strong>, to see what keywords you might want to focus on to try and beat them in the rankings game.<\/p>\n

This example focuses on the title <\/em>(using the <title> tag), description, <\/em>and keywords<\/em> tags, but could be modified to grab other data such as technical settings and so forth. Here’s the end result:<\/p>\n

Title:<\/strong> Yahoo!<\/em>
\nURL:<\/strong> http:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/<\/a>
\nDescription:<\/strong> Welcome to Yahoo!, the world’s most visited home page. Quickly find what you’re searching for, get in touch with friends and stay in-the-know with the latest news and information.
\nKeywords:<\/strong> yahoo, yahoo home page, yahoo homepage, yahoo search, yahoo mail, yahoo messenger, yahoo games, news, finance, sport, entertainment<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the programming for this little gem. (Thanks to WebHole.net<\/a> for the original code.) Here goes:<\/p>\n

<?php<\/p>\n

\/*Modified from original source:
\nhttp:\/\/webhole.net\/2010\/02\/21\/how-to-extract-meta-data-from-a-page\/
\n*\/<\/p>\n

function getMetaData($url){
\n\/\/ get meta tags
\n$meta=get_meta_tags($url);
\n\/\/ store page
\n$page=file_get_contents($url);
\n\/\/ find where the title CONTENT begins
\n$titleStart=strpos($page,'<title>’)+7;
\n\/\/ find how long the title is
\n$titleLength=strpos($page,'<\/title>’)-$titleStart;
\n\/\/ extract title from $page
\n$meta[‘title’]=substr($page,$titleStart,$titleLength);
\n\/\/ return array of data
\nreturn $meta;
\n}<\/p>\n

$website = “http:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/”;\u00a0\u00a0 \/\/ change this to the URL you want to scrape<\/p>\n

$tags=getMetaData($website);<\/p>\n

echo ‘<b>Title:<\/b> <i>’.$tags[‘title’] . ‘<\/i>’;
\necho ‘<br \/>’;
\necho ‘<b>URL:<\/b> <a href=”‘ . $website . ‘”>’ . $website . ‘<\/a><br \/>’;
\necho ‘<b>Description:<\/b> ‘.$tags[‘description’];
\necho ‘<br \/>’;
\necho ‘<b>Keywords:<\/b> ‘.$tags[‘keywords’];<\/p>\n

?><\/p><\/blockquote>\n