How to call another site from my html form

[dorello]

Hi,

Im new to PHP and I try to call another site from my html form:

<form name="form1" method="post" action="code.php">
<table border=0> 
<tr>
<td>
<font color="#000000" size="-1" face="Verdana,sans-serif"><B>URL:</B></font>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit">
<input type="reset" name="reset" value="Reset">
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form> 

and the code.php:

<?php 
global $url; 
if(isset($_POST['url'])){
  $url = $_POST['url'];
  $validurl=0;
}  
if(checkURL($url)){
  $validurl=1;
  }else{
}
function checkURL ($url)
{
        $url = @parse_url($url);
        if (!$url) {
                   return false;            
        }        
}
echo $url; 
?>

Now the problem is, Im getting only the new string on the new page, instead of the page was called.

As I said, Im very new to php, and any help wolud be very appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[djr33]

I'm not quite sure what is going on. Do you have a page we could test? In this case at least that would show us what happens with varied input to the form.

There are a few things I notice:
1. Using properly aligned tabs may seem annoying at first, but it makes the whole script a lot easier to read. For example, using }else{ looks confusing to me. I'd put it on the next line just like a new if () {.
2. Functions need to be declared before they can be called. I don't know if this is giving you an error or if for some reason it is working, but placing function definitions above the rest of the code is important and makes organization simpler.
3. Your function checkURL() seems useless-- no offense, but can't you just use if (@parse_url($url))? You have roughly the correct format for a new function, but it doesn't look necessary.

Now on to the problems:
1. parse_url() splits the URL into an array. echo $url will echo a string (a bit of text), NOT an array. An array is a group of strings (or other values). For this, you can use print_r($url). So the last line of your code should be changed.
2. You are setting $url = parse_url($url) inside a function. Inside a function, all variables remain INTERNAL. This is called variable scope. If you'd like to make that the same as the global variable, you can either make it global in scope (put this inside your function, near the top: global $url;) or you can use the & character when calling the function: checkURL(&$url). I believe this will mean "use this variable in the function and keep it linked to the global variable". Of course that only works when a value is passed to a function through the line calling it-- in other cases you'd need to use global. I see that you do have "global" in your script already, but this only works WITHIN a function. You can't make it global before using it, then put it into a function. This must be called within every lower layer of code.



Anyway, here's your code rewritten:

<?php  
if(isset($_POST['url'])){
  $url = $_POST['url'];
  $validurl=0;
}  
if(checkURL($url)){
  $validurl=1;
  }
else{
  $validurl=0;
  echo "<script>alert('Please enter a full valid URL including http://');</script>";
}
function checkURL ($url)
{
        global $url;
        $url = @parse_url($url);
        if (!$url) {
                   return false;            
        }        
}
print_r($url); 
?>

Or, much simpler:

<?php
$url = (isset($_POST['url']))?$_POST['url']:'';
$validurl=0;
if (@parse_url($url)) {
  $url=parse_url($url);
  $validurl=1;
}
else {
  echo "<script>alert('Please enter a full valid URL including http://');</script>";
}
print_r($url);
?>

There are always a few ways to write code, but as a rule, simpler is better.


Finally, note that parse_url() is not designed to validate a URL. It can give you a hint, but it's not a guarantee. Because of that, you might need to be using another function entirely or write your own. The easiest way to do this is to google "regex php url match" and see what you get. Regular expressions are pattern matching symbols that will see if a certain string fits a certain pattern. It's very hard to write, but luckily for this I expect someone will have posted the code for validating a URL somewhere.

[dorello]

Gee, I thank you for the very professional reply, Ill have to learn all this stuff.

What I actualy want to achieve is, when you write a page address, lets say google.com, that page is going to be shown in the same or in a extra window (I mean you see the site and not a text).

Right now Im using your second simpler suggestion, but I get:

Array ( [scheme] => http [host] => www.google.com )

instead of the google site itself (what I actualy want).

Thanks so much!

[djr33]

I don't understand. parse_url() is intended to split it into an array of it's parts. There you have the scheme as HTTP and the host (domain name). That's what you want, no?

So if you just want to get the URL, then you don't really need any of that unless you want to keep it for verification.
Remove $url=parse_url($url);
Then you will have $url at the end and you can do what you'd like with it.
Redirect to the page or you could even do include($url); but that might give strange results (serving google through your site). It also might trigger some negative reactions from sites that see you as acting like a proxy (serving their page on your page).
It might be easier to just echo the value into the URL for an iframe.

[dorello]

I removed the line $url=parse_url($url);

What do I need to put at the end? Just --- $url; --- in order to redirect to the inputed page ?

Thanks!

[dorello]

Sorry for the inconvenience, I found this site on the web: http://www.fleiner.com/redirect.html
This is what I want to achieve, if possible.

[djr33]

Some code that redirects. A header redirect is possible, or you could output some javascript, or a meta redirect tag.
A header redirect is the most seamless, but it also requires that it must be output before any other text on the page. If so, it'll work well.
Don't forget that some browsers refuse redirects, so you want to later output a message or link to the rare user who doesn't get redirected.

A header redirect looks like this:
header("Location: $url");

$url by itself is just text and will do nothing at all.

[dorello]

Thank you! Ill try it out in a minute.

I just found this code on the internet, I think it is interesting:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"  
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> 
<html> 
 <head> 
<title>New Window</title> 
<script type="text/javascript"> 
window.onload=function() { 
 if (document.getElementById) {  
  document.getElementById('form1').onsubmit=function() {  
} 
 } 
} 
function getURL(val){ 
 if (val=='') { alert('Please enter a url or file name.'); } 
 else { 
  var win=open(val,id,params); 
 } 
 return false; 
} 

Hmm, javascript and php on one page... I tried it out, but it is searching for files and stuff just on your domain, where it resides - as index.html lets say.

Is it possible to change it, so it would just browse the site entered?

Thank you so much for your time!!!! 

[djr33]

Note that my code was wrong above: I forgot a colon in the header. It's now corrected.

There's no PHP in that. You can use that, I think just by removing this line:
val = 'http://www.coolwebmaster.net/'+val;

[dorello]

Note that my code was wrong above: I forgot a colon in the header. It's now corrected.

Thank you sir, which code do you mean? You sent me more codes. Are you so kind to send it again?

Thanks!!