What are the advantages and disadvantages of using ob_start() and ob_get_contents() for scraping content compared to file_get_contents() or cURL?

When scraping content from a website, using ob_start() and ob_get_contents() can be advantageous because it allows you to capture and manipulate the output buffer before it's sent to the browser. This can be useful for extracting specific content or modifying the HTML structure. However, this approach can be more complex and may not be as straightforward as using file_get_contents() or cURL to fetch the content directly. 

// Using ob_start() and ob_get_contents() to scrape content
$url = 'https://www.example.com';
$ch = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$output = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

ob_start();
echo $output;
$contents = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();

// Now you can manipulate or extract content from $contents

Keywords

ob_start ob_get_contents file_get_contents cURL scraping

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