sfWebBrowserPlugin - 0.9.2

Standalone HTTP client

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sfWebBrowser plugin

The sfWebBrowserPlugin proposes an HTTP client capable of making web requests. The interface is similar to that of sfTestBrowser.

Possible uses

  • Querying a Web service
  • Monitoring a Website
  • Mashup of content from several websites
  • Aggregation of RSS feeds
  • Proxy to another server
  • Cross-domain AJAX interactions
  • API to foreign websites
  • ...

Contents

This plugin contains one single class: sfWebBrowser. Unit tests are available in the SVN repository, to be placed in a symfony application's test/ directory.

Features

The sfWebBrowser class makes web requests based on a URI:

$b = new sfWebBrowser();
$b->get('http://www.example.com/');
$res = $b->getResponseText();

The usual methods of the sfTestBrowser also work there, with the fluid interface.

// Inline
$b->get('http://www.example.com/')->get('http://www.google.com/')->back()->reload();
// More readable
$b->get('http://www.example.com/')

  *>get('http://www.google.com/')

  *>back()

  *>reload();

The browser accepts absolute and relative URIs

$b->get('http://www.example.com/test.html');
$b->get('test.html');

The get() method accepts parameters either as a query string, or as an array.

$b->get('http://www.example.com/test.php?foo=bar');
$b->get('http://www.example.com/test.php', array('foo', 'bar'));

Requests in POST mode are also supported.

$b->post('http://www.example.com/test.php', array('foo', 'bar'));

You can access the response in various formats, at your convenience:

$myString         = $b->getResponseText();
$myString         = $b->getResponseBody(); // drop the <head> part
$myDomDocument    = $b->getResponseDom();
$myDomCssSelector = $b->getResponseDomCssSelector();
$mySimpleXml      = $b->getResponseXml();

You can also interact with the response with the setFields() and click() methods.

$b->get('http://www.example.com/login')

  *>setField('user', 'foobar')

  *>setField('password', 'barbaz')

  *>click('submit');

The browser supports HTTP and HTTPS requests, proxies, redirects, and timeouts.

Installation

  • Install the plugin

    $ symfony plugin-install http://plugins.symfony-project.com/sfWebBrowserPlugin

  • Clear the cache to enable the autoloading to find the new class

    $ symfony cc

Known limitations

The web request is made via fopen(), so this will only work if PHP is compiled with sockets support and if allow_url_fopen is defined to true in the php.ini.

Cookies are not handled yet.

Caching is not supported yet.