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getting OnLoad HTML/DOM for an HTML page in PHP

I am trying to get the HTML (ie what you see initially when the page completes loading) for some web-page URI. Stripping out all error checking and assuming static HTML, it's a single line of code:
function GetDisplayedHTML($uri) {
return file_get_contents($uri);
}
This works fine for static HTML, and is easy to extend by simple parsing, if the page has static file dependencies/references. So tags like <script src="XXX">, <a href="XXX">, <img src="XXX">, and CSS, can also be detected and the dependencies returned in an array, if they matter.
But what about web pages where the HTML is dynamically created using events/AJAX? For example suppose the HTML for the web page is just a brief AJAX-based or OnLoad script that builds the visible web page? Then parsing alone won't work.
I guess what I need is a way from within PHP, to open and render the http response (ie the HTML we get at first) via some javascript engine or browser, and once it 'stabilises', capture the HTML (or static DOM?) that's now present, which will be what the user's actually seeing.
Since such a webpage could continually change itself, I'd have to define "stable" (OnLoad or after X seconds?). I also don't need to capture any timer or async event states (ie "things set in motion that might cause web page updates at some future time"). I only need enough of the DOM to represent the static appearance the user could see, at that time.
What would I need to do, to achieve this programmatically in PHP?

To render page with JS you need to use some browser. PhantomJS was created for tasks like this. Here is simple script to run with Phantom:
var webPage = require('webpage');
var page = webPage.create();
var system = require('system');
var args = system.args;
if (args.length === 1) {
console.log('First argument must be page URL!');
} else {
page.open(args[1], function (status) {
window.setTimeout(function () { //Wait for scripts to run
var content = page.content;
console.log(content);
phantom.exit();
}, 500);
});
}
It returns resulting HTML to console output.
You can run it from console like this:
./phantomjs.exe render.js http://yandex.ru
Or you can use PHP to run it:
<?php
$path = dirname(__FILE__);
$html = shell_exec($path . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'phantomjs.exe render.js http://phantomjs.org/');
echo htmlspecialchars($html);
My PHP code assumes that PhantomJS executable is in the same directory as PHP script.

Sending Javascript code to client-side is not escaped correctly

I'm struggling with an encoding-problem in a small system I'm constructing.
In an HTML, this script is loaded
<script src="http://localhost:8000/serving/dk-711218"></script>
and normally I can't access the HTML so everything has to be done inside the javascript file.
The server-side scripts are made in Node.js and it returns pieces of code depending on some settings in customizable XML files. For instance, when displaying an image the system returns a simple
<img src="mypicture.jpg" />
and if it's a text, it returns
<div class="myClass">This is a test</div>
and if they have special behaviors, this code is included as well.
These parts work as intended. These chunks of code resides inside a number of classes and are returned as needed so that the code is gradually built.
So far, so good.
The problem is returning the SWFobject library code, because it seems to corrupt the code on the fly.
All code has been escaped and encoded with encodeURIComponent so that the system just needs to decode and unescape. But the validation fails.
Here's an example of the first few lines before encoding/escaping:
var%2520swfobject%253Dfunction%2528%2529%257Bvar...
Here's how a piece of the SWFObject looks like in the Firefox source code window when accessing the page:
and here's how a piece of the decoded SWFObject looks like in the same window:
This occurs at several places and something that's common for these occurrences is that it looks like the less-than character for unknown reasons is interpreted differently.
Here's the view renderer and I can't figure out if problem is caused in the code or when rendering the code.
Any ideas to what's causing this behavior? Or perhaps some advices on best practice when including code this way?
Responses to comments:
try JSON.stringify
I've tried the JSON solution out as well and it does the trick!
What I did was - as before - to pre-process the included code, using a little tool I built with two input-fields and a JSON.stringify-command between the two. This resulted in the content of returnvar:
Module.prototype.opens = function () {
var returnvar = "var swfobject=function(){var D=\"undefined\",r=\"object\",S=\"Shockwave Flash\",W=\"ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash\",q=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\",R=\"SWFObjectExprInst\"... etc.
and a JSON.parse is used to correct it again in the renderer:
router.get('/serving/:id', function (req, res) {
var readSymbolicsXMLCallback = function(data) {
res.render('index', {
id: req.params.id,
embedcode: JSON.parse(data)
});
}
var embedcode = readSymbolicsXML(req.params.id, readSymbolicsXMLCallback);
});

Inject local .js file into a webpage?

I'd like to inject a couple of local .js files into a webpage. I just mean client side, as in within my browser, I don't need anybody else accessing the page to be able to see it. I just need to take a .js file, and then make it so it's as if that file had been included in the page's html via a <script> tag all along.
It's okay if it takes a second after the page has loaded for the stuff in the local files to be available.
It's okay if I have to be at the computer to do this "by hand" with a console or something.
I've been trying to do this for two days, I've tried Greasemonkey, I've tried manually loading files using a JavaScript console. It amazes me that there isn't (apparently) an established way to do this, it seems like such a simple thing to want to do. I guess simple isn't the same thing as common, though.
If it helps, the reason why I want to do this is to run a chatbot on a JS-based chat client. Some of the bot's code is mixed into the pre-existing chat code -- for that, I have Fiddler intercepting requests to .../chat.js and replacing it with a local file. But I have two .js files which are "independant" of anything on the page itself. There aren't any .js files requested by the page that I can substitute them for, so I can't use Fiddler.

Since your already using a fiddler script, you can do something like this in the OnBeforeResponse(oSession: Session) function
if ( oSession.oResponse.headers.ExistsAndContains("Content-Type", "html") &&
oSession.hostname.Contains("MY.TargetSite.com") ) {
oSession.oResponse.headers.Add("DEBUG1_WE_EDITED_THIS", "HERE");
// Remove any compression or chunking
oSession.utilDecodeResponse();
var oBody = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(oSession.responseBodyBytes);
// Find the end of the HEAD script, so you can inject script block there.
var oRegEx = oRegEx = /(<\/head>)/gi
// replace the head-close tag with new-script + head-close
oBody = oBody.replace(oRegEx, "<script type='text/javascript'>console.log('We injected it');</script></head>");
// Set the response body to the changed body string
oSession.utilSetResponseBody(oBody);
}
Working example for www.html5rocks.com :
if ( oSession.oResponse.headers.ExistsAndContains("Content-Type", "html") &&
oSession.hostname.Contains("html5rocks") ) { //goto html5rocks.com
oSession.oResponse.headers.Add("DEBUG1_WE_EDITED_THIS", "HERE");
oSession.utilDecodeResponse();
var oBody = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(oSession.responseBodyBytes);
var oRegEx = oRegEx = /(<\/head>)/gi
oBody = oBody.replace(oRegEx, "<script type='text/javascript'>alert('We injected it')</script></head>");
oSession.utilSetResponseBody(oBody);
}
Note, you have to turn streaming off in fiddler : http://www.fiddler2.com/fiddler/help/streaming.asp and I assume you would need to decode HTTPS : http://www.fiddler2.com/fiddler/help/httpsdecryption.asp
I have been using fiddler script less and less, in favor of fiddler .Net Extensions - http://fiddler2.com/fiddler/dev/IFiddlerExtension.asp

If you are using Chrome then check out dotjs.
It will do exactly what you want!

How about just using jquery's jQuery.getScript() method?
http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.getScript/

save the normal html pages to the file system, add the js files manually by hand, and then use fiddler to intercept those calls so you get your version of the html file

Applying DOM Manipulations to HTML and saving the result?

I have about 100 static HTML pages that I want to apply some DOM manipulations to. They all follow the same HTML structure. I want to apply some DOM manipulations to each of these files, and then save the resulting HTML.
These are the manipulations I want to apply:
# [start]
$("h1.title, h2.description", this).wrap("<hgroup>");
if ( $("h1.title").height() < 200 ) {
$("div.content").addClass('tall');
}
# [end]
# SAVE NEW HTML
The first line (.wrap()) I could easily do with a find and replace, but it gets tricky when I have to determine the calculated height of an element, which can't be easily be determined sans-JavaScript.
Does anyone know how I can achieve this? Thanks!

While the first part could indeed be solved in "text mode" using regular expressions or a more complete DOM implementation in JavaScript, for the second part (the height calculation), you'll need a real, full browser or a headless engine like PhantomJS.
From the PhantomJS homepage:
PhantomJS is a command-line tool that packs and embeds WebKit.
Literally it acts like any other WebKit-based web browser, except that
nothing gets displayed to the screen (thus, the term headless). In
addition to that, PhantomJS can be controlled or scripted using its
JavaScript API.
A schematic instruction (which I admit is not tested) follows.
In your modification script (say, modify-html-file.js) open an HTML page, modify it's DOM tree and console.log the HTML of the root element:
var page = new WebPage();
page.open(encodeURI('file://' + phantom.args[0]), function (status) {
if (status === 'success') {
var html = page.evaluate(function () {
// your DOM manipulation here
return document.documentElement.outerHTML;
});
console.log(html);
}
phantom.exit();
});
Next, save the new HTML by redirecting your script's output to a file:
#!/bin/bash
mkdir modified
for i in *.html; do
phantomjs modify-html-file.js "$1" > modified/"$1"
done

I tried PhantomJS as in katspaugh's answer, but ran into several issues trying to manipulate pages. My use case was modifying the static html output of Doxygen, without modifying Doxygen itself. The goal was to reduce delivered file size by remove unnecessary elements from the page, and convert it to HTML5. Additionally I also wanted to use jQuery to access and modify elements more easily.
Loading the page in PhantomJS
The APIs appear to have changed drastically since the accepted answer. Additionally, I used a different approach (derived from this answer), which will be important in mitigating one of the major issues I encountered.
var system = require('system');
var fs = require('fs');
var page = require('webpage').create();
// Reading the page's content into your "webpage"
// This automatically refreshes the page
page.content = fs.read(system.args[1]);
// Make all your changes here
fs.write(system.args[2], page.content, 'w');
phantom.exit();
Preventing JavaScript from Running
My page uses Google Analytics in the footer, and now the page is modified beyond my intention, presumably because javascript was run. If we disable javascript, we can't actually use jQuery to modify the page, so that isn't an option. I've tried temporarily changing the tag, but when I do, every special character is replaced with an html-escaped equivalent, destroying all javascript code on the page. Then, I came across this answer, which gave me the following idea.
var rawPageString = fs.read(system.args[1]);
rawPageString = rawPageString.replace(/<script type="text\/javascript"/g, "<script type='foo/bar'");
rawPageString = rawPageString.replace(/<script>/g, "<script type='foo/bar'>");
page.content = rawPageString;
// Make all your changes here
rawPageString = page.content;
rawPageString = rawPageString.replace(/<script type='foo\/bar'/g, "<script");
Adding jQuery
There's actually an example on how to use jQuery. However, I thought an offline copy would be more appropriate. Initially I tried using page.includeJs as in the example, but found that page.injectJs was more suitable for the use case. Unlike includeJs, there's no <script> tag added to the page context, and the call blocks execution which simplifies the code. jQuery was placed in the same directory I was executing my script from.
page.injectJs("jquery-2.1.4.min.js");
page.evaluate(function () {
// Make all changes here
// Remove the foo/bar type more easily here
$("script[type^=foo]").removeAttr("type");
});
fs.write(system.args[2], page.content, 'w');
phantom.exit();
Putting it All Together
var system = require('system');
var fs = require('fs');
var page = require('webpage').create();
var rawPageString = fs.read(system.args[1]);
// Prevent in-page javascript execution
rawPageString = rawPageString.replace(/<script type="text\/javascript"/g, "<script type='foo/bar'");
rawPageString = rawPageString.replace(/<script>/g, "<script type='foo/bar'>");
page.content = rawPageString;
page.injectJs("jquery-2.1.4.min.js");
page.evaluate(function () {
// Make all changes here
// Remove the foo/bar type
$("script[type^=foo]").removeAttr("type");
});
fs.write(system.args[2], page.content, 'w');
phantom.exit();
Using it from the command line:
phantomjs modify-html-file.js "input_file.html" "output_file.html"
Note: This was tested and working with PhantomJS 2.0.0 on Windows 8.1.
Pro tip: If speed matters, you should consider iterating the files from within your PhantomJS script rather than a shell script. This will avoid the latency that PhantomJS has when starting up.

you can get your modified content by $('html').html() (or a more specific selector if you don't want stuff like head tags), then submit it as a big string to your server and write the file server side.

How to use javascript to get information from the content of another page (same domain)?

Let's say I have a web page (/index.html) that contains the following
<li>
<div>item1</div>
details
</li>
and I would like to have some javascript on /index.html to load that
/details/item1.html page and extract some information from that page.
The page /details/item1.html might contain things like
<div id="some_id">
picture
map
</div>
My task is to write a greasemonkey script, so changing anything serverside is not an option.
To summarize, javascript is running on /index.html and I would
like to have the javascript code to add some information on /index.html
extracted from both /index.html and /details/item1.html.
My question is how to fetch information from /details/item1.html.
I currently have written code to extract the link (e.g. /details/item1.html)
and pass this on to a method that should extract the wanted information (at first
just .innerHTML from the some_id div is ok, I can process futher later).
The following is my current attempt, but it does not work. Any suggestions?
function get_information(link)
{
var obj = document.createElement('object');
obj.data = link;
document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0].appendChild(obj)
var some_id = document.getElementById('some_id');
if (! some_id) {
alert("some_id == NULL");
return "";
}
return some_id.innerHTML;
}

First:
function get_information(link, callback) {
var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open("GET", link, true);
xhr.onreadystatechange = function() {
if (xhr.readyState === 4) {
callback(xhr.responseText);
}
};
xhr.send(null);
}
then
get_information("/details/item1.html", function(text) {
var div = document.createElement("div");
div.innerHTML = text;
// Do something with the div here, like inserting it into the page
});
I have not tested any of this - off the top of my head. YMMV

As only one page exists in the client (browser) at a time and all other (virtual/possible) pages are on the server, how will you get information from another page using JavaScript as you will have to interact with the server at some point to retrieve the second page?
If you can, integrate some AJAX-request to load the second page (and parse it), but if that's not an option, I'd say you'll have to load all pages that you want to extract information from at the same time, hide the bits you don't want to show (in hidden DIVs?) and then get your index (or whoever controls the view) to retrieve the needed information from there ... even though that sounds pretty creepy ;)

You can load the page in a hidden iframe and use normal DOM manipulation to extract the results, or get the text of the page via AJAX, grab the part between <body...>...</body>¨ and temporarily inject it into a div. (The second might fail for some exotic elements like ins.) I would expect Greasemonkey to have more powerful functions than normal Javascript for stuff like that, though - it might be worth to thumb through the documentation.