Scrape external webpage for first image and add it to new post

Question

I'm looking for a way to scrape an external page for its first/best/largest image and insert a copy of that image as the featured image of a new post on my Wordpress site.

The way that I was hoping this would work would be that a user of my site would enter the URL of an external webpage into a form, and it would scrape that page for its first/best/largest image and set it as the featured image of a new post, which would then be published upon submission of the form. I have the front-end post submission set up with Gravity Forms which allows users of my site to create new posts, but I am confused with the backend web scraping part of it.

Is it possible to achieve this in Wordpress? Maybe using the HTTP API? I'm not a programmer so the HTTP API is a little intimidating to me. I'm hoping someone here with more programming knowledge than me that is familiar with Wordpress can help.

Answer 1

It is possible as referenced here

but you are talking about a great deal of customization in the Gravity forms plugin and like you said you are not a programmer yourself, so you better open a support ticket in their forums and they might be able to help.

Also look at this code that can help you if you decide to do it yourself

    $upload_dir = wp_upload_dir();
$image_data = file_get_contents($image_url);
$filename = basename($image_url);
if(wp_mkdir_p($upload_dir['path']))
    $file = $upload_dir['path'] . '/' . $filename;
else
    $file = $upload_dir['basedir'] . '/' . $filename;
file_put_contents($file, $image_data);

$wp_filetype = wp_check_filetype($filename, null );
$attachment = array(
    'post_mime_type' => $wp_filetype['type'],
    'post_title' => sanitize_file_name($filename),
    'post_content' => '',
    'post_status' => 'inherit'
);
$attach_id = wp_insert_attachment( $attachment, $file, $post_id );
require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/image.php');
$attach_data = wp_generate_attachment_metadata( $attach_id, $file );
wp_update_attachment_metadata( $attach_id, $attach_data );

set_post_thumbnail( $post_id, $attach_id );

$image_url is what you will get from user input / upload.