README

Provides convenient way of getting listing data by various Craigslist filters.

###IMPORTANT NOTE - For educational purposes only. This software was developed as an experiment to demonstrate web scraping basics. Craigslist may prohibit use of automated gathering tools. Use at your own discretion.

Features

• Get listings by city and category
• Get listings by custom URLs
• Merge sets of listings from multiple requests

Dependency

• [PHP 5.4+] (http://php.net/)
• [PHP Simple HTML Dom Parser] (https://github.com/sunra/php-simple-html-dom-parser)

Installation

Issue following command in console:

composer require andrewevansmith/php-craigslist-api-utility:dev-master

Alternatively edit composer.json by adding following line and run composer update

"require": { 
    ....,
    "andrewevansmith/php-craigslist-api-utility": "dev-master",
	
},

Usage

Example: making a simple Craigslist request:

    use Craigslist\CraigslistRequest;
    use Craigslist\CraigslistApi;

    $request = new CraigslistRequest([
        'city' => 'louisville',
        'category' => 'pet',
        'query' => 'pup'
    ]);
    $api = new CraigslistApi();
    $result = $api->get($request);
    ....

Example: making a detailed Craigslist request, getting custom fields (photo urls):

    use Craigslist\CraigslistRequest;
    use Craigslist\CraigslistApi;

    $request = new CraigslistRequest(array(
        'city' => 'louisville',
        'category' => 'pet',
        'query' => 'pup',
        'follow_links' => true,
        'selectors' => array(
            array('label' => 'photos', 'element' => 'img', 'limit' => 10, 'target' => 'src'),
        ),
    ));
    $api = new CraigslistApi();
    $result = $api->get($request);
    ....

Example: making multiple Craigslist requests:

    use Craigslist\CraigslistRequest;
    use Craigslist\CraigslistApi;

    $requests = array( 
        new CraigslistRequest(array(
            'city' => 'louisville',
            'category' => 'pet',
            'query' => 'pup',
            'follow_links' => true,
            'selectors' => array( 
                array('label' => 'photos', 'element' => 'img', 'limit' => 3, 'target' => 'src'),
            )
        )),
        new CraigslistRequest(array(
            'city' => 'lexington',
            'category' => 'pet',
            'query' => 'cat',
            'follow_links' => true,
            'selectors' => array(
                array('label' => 'photos', 'element' => 'img', 'limit' => 3, 'target' => 'src'),
            )
        )),
    );
    $api = new CraigslistApi();
    $result = $api->get($requests);
    ....

Support

Please open an issue on GitHub

License

This software is released under the MIT License. See the bundled LICENSE file for details.