Wordpress from url get external source title

Question

Hi I am building a news website. I am trying to automate it.

1. News url (metabox)
2. Title
3. Content area
4. Image (featured image option on wordpress)

When paste the site url I would like the other metabox to pull the data from the source http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34527439

I want title and description to pulled form bbc website

1. News url: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34527439
2. Title: Should be fetched from <title>
3. Content area: should be from <meta name="description".>
4. Image: Should be first image on the content

I see you can use php cURL any more pointers to wordpress would be much appreciated http://www.php.net/manual/en/curl.examples-basic.php

Thanks

Answer 1

Here you go:

class UrlToTitleConverter{

    public function convert($Url){
        $response = wp_remote_get($Url);
        if ( is_array( $response ) ) {
            $body = $response['body'];
            $title = substr($body, strpos($body, '<title>')+7);
            $title = substr($title, 0, strpos($title, '</title>'));
        }
        return $title;
    }
}

Answer 2

Try this one

$tags    = get_meta_tags('http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34527439');
$title   = $tags['twitter:title'];
$content = $tags['description'];
$image   = $tags['twitter:image:src'];

If you're OK using the twitter:title and the twitter:image:src. You'll also have to vet every source you're trying to pull from to see if they have a consistent meta schema. If it alters from the bbc.com site just do a switch statement on some identifier for the site you're pulling tags from to build a data array.

Output from URL provided.

 Array
(
    [description] => The UK's National Crime Agency says cyber-attackers have stolen more than £20m from British bank accounts.
    [x-country] => us
    [x-audience] => US
    [cps_audience] => US
    [cps_changequeueid] => 259204896
    [twitter:card] => summary_large_image
    [twitter:site] => @BBCWorld
    [twitter:title] => Online attackers steal £20m from UK bank accounts - BBC News
    [twitter:description] => The UK's National Crime Agency says cyber-attackers have stolen more than £20m from British bank accounts.
    [twitter:creator] => @BBCWorld
    [twitter:image:src] => http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/560/cpsprodpb/37A1/production/_86114241_thinkstock.jpg
    [twitter:domain] => www.bbc.com
    [apple-mobile-web-app-title] => BBC News
    [application-name] => BBC News
    [msapplication-tileimage] => http://static.bbci.co.uk/news/1.91.0426/windows-eight-icon-144x144.png
    [msapplication-tilecolor] => #bb1919
    [mobile-web-app-capable] => yes
    [robots] => NOODP,NOYDIR
    [theme-color] => #bb1919
    [viewport] => width=device-width, initial-scale=1, user-scalable=1
)

FYI - wordpress has a wrapper for cURL that's helpful

wp_remote_get( $url, $args );

https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_remote_get