Tag: workaround
Custom Google Search “API” by PHP (No API Needed)
by z3n on Jun.16, 2009, under Coding, Tips & Hints
Problem:
I was looking for an API to do searches by google using a custom made php script, so i could display the results the way i want. I found out about a google search api that work with SOAP, however it’s been deprected and they only have the useless AJAX option, which don’t really serve my propouse since the searches would be client-side processed at AJAX, and i needed them server-side processed.
Solution:
This might looks like a hack, but there’s nothing much else we can do, although, for me, it was much easier than doing the research on the original api and finally finding out it was deprected. This PHP script will do a regular request to google, then it will process the data using DOM, cut it removing google ads and other crap, and finally return only the urls of the search. This will also make you able to search on country specific google, just change the domain and filter to get the results you want.
So here’s the PHP source that don’t depend on google happyness to work:
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if (!isset($argv[1])) { echo "Usage: ".$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']." [start]";die; } else { $s=$argv[1]; }
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$e=(isset($argv[2])) ? "&start=".$argv[2] : "";
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$x=file_get_contents("http://www.google.com/search?q=".$s."&num=100".$e);
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// apply DOM
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$dom=new DOMDocument();
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@$dom->loadHTML($x);
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$xpath=new DOMXPath($dom);
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$a=$xpath->evaluate("/html/body//a");
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for ($i=$k=0;$i<$a->length;$i++) {
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$y=$a->item($i);
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$z=$y->getAttribute('href');
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// filter out google crap, wikipedia and youtube
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if (($z{0} != "/") && (strpos($z,"q=cache:") === false) && (strpos($z,"youtube.com/") === false) && (strpos($z,"wikipedia.org/") === false) && (strpos($z,".google.com/") === false)) {
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$_url[$k]=$z;$k++;
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}
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}
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print_r($_url);
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echo "Found: ".$k." urls.";
* Note: You need DOM Object support in order to run this script; This example has been developed to accept input from the CLI, you can easly change it to work inside your script or/and accept $_GET or $_POST.
