get value from external webpage (php or java)

Question

I need to get a number from a external webpage

<span>
<b>Maximum price:</b>
7 //value i need
</span>

Then display said number

Answer 1

In Java you can use HTMLUnit library. It's good at HTML extraction. For example something similar to:

webClient=new WebClient();
HtmlPage page=webClient.getPage(url);
for(HtmlElement elem:page.getElementsByTagName("span")) {
   //And then getChildren(), getText ...
}

Answer 2

The following code works. I've used this thread as the source page.

<?php

// Read the whole file.
$lines = file('http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4573498/get-value-from-external-webpage-php-or-java');

// Go through every line ..
while ($line = array_shift($lines)) {

        // Stop when you find the label we're looking for.
        if (strpos($line, 'Maximum price') !== false) break;

}

// The next line has your value on it.
$line = array_shift($lines);

// Print the first word on the line.
$values = explode(' ', $line);
echo $values[0];

Answer 3

If you know the address of the page and you are sure that their content will not change during the time, you can find the number by means of DOM. But I need more detail about your problem.