How to Scrape and Download Images Without Extensions Using PHP

Introduction

Scraping images without extensions using PHP can be a challenging task, but with the right techniques, it can be accomplished easily. This article will explain how to write a PHP script to scrape and download images without extensions from a web page.

Creating the PHP Script

First, we need to create a PHP script that will scrape and download images. The cURL library can be used to send HTTP requests, while regular expressions help us find image links without extensions.

Create a PHP file named "grab_images.php" and add the following code to it:

// Set the URL of the site to scrape
$url = "https://example.com";
// Initialize cURL handle
$ch = curl_init();
// Set cURL options
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
// Execute cURL request
$response = curl_exec($ch);
// Close cURL handle
curl_close($ch);
// Initialize an array to store found image links
$images = array();
// Use regex to find image links without extensions
preg_match_all('/src="([^"]+)"[^>]*>/', $response, $matches);
// Loop through the found matches
foreach ($matches[1] as $match) {
    // If the link doesn't contain an extension, add it to the array
    if (!pathinfo($match, PATHINFO_EXTENSION)) {
        $images[] = $match;
    }
}
// Output the found image links
foreach ($images as $image) {
    echo $image . "\n";
}

Parsing the Page

The code above sends an HTTP request to the specified URL and stores the returned HTML content in the variable $response. We then use regular expressions to extract all the image tags and store the links of images without extensions in the $images array.

Next, add the following code to the bottom of the PHP file to download the images:

// Loop through the found image links
foreach ($images as $image) {
    // Generate the image filename
    $filename = basename($image);
    // Download the image
    file_put_contents($filename, file_get_contents($image));
}

Running the Script

To run the PHP script, execute the following command in the terminal:

php grab_images.php

The script will send an HTTP request to the specified URL, extract image links without extensions, and then download and save the corresponding images.

Make sure the directory where the script is located has write permissions to allow saving the downloaded images.

Conclusion

In this article, we demonstrated how to scrape and download images without extensions using PHP. By utilizing the cURL library for sending HTTP requests and regular expressions to parse the page, we can easily extract image links. The file_get_contents function is then used to download and save the images. This script is useful for automating tasks or implementing as a custom feature.