README

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
Fetch images and other types of content
...

This plugin contains four classes: sfWebBrowser, sfCurlAdapter, sfFopenAdapter, and sfSocketsAdapter. 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:

<?php

$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.

<?php

// 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

<?php

$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 associative array.

<?php

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

POST, PUT and DELETE requests are also supported.

<?php

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

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

<?php

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

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

Gzip and deflate content-encoded response bodies are also supported, provided that you have the [http://php.net/zlib zlib extention] enabled.

Adapters

The browser can use various adapters to perform the requests, and uses the following selection order by default:

sfCurlAdapter: Uses Curl to fetch pages. This adapter is a lot faster than sfFopenAdapter, however PHP must be compiled with the with-curl option, and the curl extension must be enabled in php.ini (which is rarely the case by default) for it to work.
sfFopenAdapter: Uses fopen() to fetch pages. fopen() can take an URL as a parameter provided that PHP is compiled with sockets support, and allow_url_fopen is defined to true in php.ini. This is the case in most PHP distributions, so the default adapter should work in almost every platform. On the other hand, the compatibility has a cost: this adapter is slow.
sfSocketsAdapter: Uses fsockopen() to fetch pages.

Alternatively, you can specify an adapter explicitly when you create a new browser object, as follows:

<?php

// use default adapter, i.e. sfCurlAdapter
$b = new sfWebBrowser(array());

// use sfFopenAdapter
$b = new sfWebBrowser(array(), 'sfFopenAdapter');

Currenly, sfCurlAdapter offers slightly more functionality than the other adapters. Namely, it supports multipart file uploads and cookies, which means you can login to a site as well as upload files via forms.

<?php

// upload files via a form
$b = new sfWebBrowser();
$b->post($url_of_form, array(
  'file_field' => '/path/to/my/local/file.jpg'
));

// login to a website
$b = new sfWebBrowser(array(), 'sfCurlAdapter', array('cookies' => true));
$b->post($url_of_login_form, array(
  'user_field' => $username,
  'pass_field' => $password
));

Full examples are available in the unit tests.

Error Handling

sfWebBrowser distinguishes to types of error: adapter errors and response errors. Thus, sfWebBrowser calls should be run this way :

<?php

$b = new sfWebBrowser();
try
{
  if (!$b->get($url)->responseIsError())
  {
    // Successful response (eg. 200, 201, etc)
  }
  else
  {
    // Error response (eg. 404, 500, etc)
  }
}
catch (Exception $e)
{
  // Adapter error (eg. Host not found)
}

Besides, you should always remember that the response contents may contain incorrect code. Consider it as 'tainted', and therefore always use the escaping when outputting it to a template.

<?php
// In the action
$this->title = (string) $b->getResponseXml()->body->h1

// In the template
?>
<?php echo $title // dangerous ?>
<?php echo $sf_data->get('title') // correct ?>

Installation

Install the plugin

$ php symfony plugin:install sfWebBrowserPlugin  # for symfony 1.1 and 1.2
$ php symfony plugin-install http://plugins.symfony-project.com/sfWebBrowserPlugin    # for symfony 1.0

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

$ symfony cc

Known limitations

Cookies, caching, and file uploads are not yet supported in any of the packages (some of this functionality is available with sfCurlAdapter, see above).

Changelog

Trunk

2016-05-04 | 1.2.0 Stable

jeromemacias: Do not save into stack by default (fixed memory leak)
jeromemacias: Removed interaction with response (click and setField methods)
COil: Added the CURL error number in the returned exception
GromNaN: Inject sf_web_browser as a service (require symfony1 fork with service container)
GromNaN: Composer compatible
jeromemacias: Added followRedirect property (default: true), now possible to turn it off
CaptainJojo: Update sfCurlAdapter for init postfields
IllyaSvergun: PHP 5.5 compatibility
siimsoni: sfCurlAdapter binary compatibility

2009-05-12 | 1.1.2 Stable

francois: Fixed sfCurlAdapter destructor
francois: Fixed sf1.2 compatibility issue for custom exception
francois: Fixed a few limit case bugs and made the tests pass

2009-04-22 | 1.1.1 Stable

francois: Fixed README syntax for parameters array
bmeynell: Fixed custom options in sfCurlAdapter

2008-09-23 | 1.1.0 Stable

francois: Translated README to Markdown
francois: Added support for custom options in sfCurlAdapter
francois: Added suppot for Timeout with sfCurlAdapter (based on a patch by adoanhuu)
blacksun: Allow for SSL certificate verification
francois: Added a test to check exceptions thrown by getResponseXML
bmeynell: added multipart file upload support to sfCurlAdapter
bmeynell: fixed regex in getResponseBody() which was returning an empty body
bmeynell: sfCurlAdapter: Added new options: 'cookies', 'cookies_dir', 'cookies_file', 'verbose', 'verbose_log'
bmeynell: sfCurlAdapter: Increased speed by Moving some initialization from call() to the constructer
tristan: Easier management of invalid XML responses
francois: Fixed a bug in sfFopenAdapter error handler
bmeynell: Added chunked transfer encoding support to sfSocketsAdapter
bmeynell: Added support for 301 redirects in sfSocketsAdapter

2007-03-27 | 1.0.1 stable

bmeynell: Fixed a bug with sfCurlAdapter causing 'Bad Request' error responses
francois: Fixed a bug with get() when arg_separator.output is not set to '&' in php.ini (patch from river.bright)
francois: Fixed a bug with get() when query string is already present in the url (based on a patch from Jeff Merlet)
francois: Fixed auto-adapter decision in sfWebBrowser::__construct()

2007-03-08 | 1.0.0 stable

francois: Added auto-adapter decision in sfWebBrowser::__construct()
francois: Changed tested URLs a bit to avoid redirection issues with google
bmeynell: Added sfSocketsAdapter
bmeynell: sfCurlAdapter: more detailed error messages & leaner request setup

2007-02-22 | 0.9.6 Beta

bmeynell, tristan: Allowed for requests with any method in sfCurlAdapter
tristan: Added sfWebBrowser::responseIsError()
tristan: Added sfWebBrowser::getResponseMessage()
tristan: Refactored error management in sfFopenAdapter

2007-02-21 | 0.9.5 Beta

bmeynell: Fixed bug with relative uri's attempting to use a port other than 80 (sfWebBrowser, 132 - 146)
bmeynell: Fixed small bug not printing hostname on exception (sfFopenAdapter, 61-62)
bmeynell: Created sfCurlAdapter and passes all unit tests
bmeynell: Removed '$changeStack = true' from call() prototype in sfCurlAdapter, sfFopenAdapter, and moved changestack check to sfWebBrowser
bmeynell: Added $askeet_url to sfWebBrowserTest
bmeynell: Added easy toggling between adapters in sfWebBrowserTest
tristan: Added put() and delete() public methods
tristan: Added unit tests to validate request HTTP method

2007-02-16 | 0.9.4 Beta

francois: Refactored the browser to make it multi-adapter
francois: '''BC break''' constructor signature changed : new sfWebBrowser(array $headers, string $adapter_class, array $adapter_options)
francois: Fixed notice when trying to retrieve inexistent header
francois: Fixed header case normalization
francois: Transformed setResponseXXX() methods to public
francois: Fixed caps in initializeRequestHeaders()
francois: Fixed unit test #40

2007-02-16 | 0.9.3 Beta

tristan: Added support for gzip and deflate.
tristan: Possibility to pass default request headers to sfWebBrowser's constructor
tristan: "Accept-Encoding" header is automatically set depending on PHP capabilities
tristan: Fixed problems with request and response headers case
tristan: Renamed "browser options" to "adapter options" (http://www.symfony-project.com/forum/index.php/m/21635/)
tristan: '''BC break''' constructor signature changed : new sfWebBrowser(array $headers, array $adapter_options)
tristan: Unit tested POST requests
tristan: Changed way httpd headers are stored internally
tristan: Fixed small bug in getResponseBody()
francois: Fixed unit test for malformed headers

2007-02-09 | 0.9.2 Beta

francois: Fixed notice with getResponseXML()

2007-02-08 | 0.9.1 Beta

francois: Fixed notice with some headers
francois: Added license and copyright

2007-02-08 | 0.9.0 Beta

francois: Initial release

lexpress / sf-web-browser-plugin

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