Remotely Download Google AJAX Libraries Using PHP

By  on  

I don't know how to use all of the JavaScript libraries but perusing their code is interesting. If I'm looking to code something I'll look at how each of the other libraries accomplishes the task. The problem is that you need to go out and download each one. And of course they're all on different development schedules so you'd also need to make sure to grab the latest version of the library. Instead of manually accomplishing that task, I've chosen create a script that does all of that for me.

The PHP

//settings
$dir = 'js-libs/';
$url = 'http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/documentation/index.html';

//open file
$content = get_content($url);
echo 'Retrieved page from Google.';

//parse
$regex = '/http:\/\/ajax.googleapis.com\/ajax\/libs\/.*.js/isU';

//match?
preg_match_all($regex,$content,$matches);

//make sure there are no repeated files
$js_files = array_unique($matches[0]);

//download every file and save locally
foreach($js_files as $file) {
	//download
	$content = get_content($file);
	//save
	$filename = str_replace(array('http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/','/'),array('','-'),$file);
	file_put_contents($dir.$filename,$content);
	//
	echo 'saving ',$file;
}

//function to grab content from a url
function get_content($url) {
	$ch = curl_init();
	curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_USERAGENT,'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.13) Gecko/20080311 Firefox/2.0.0.13');
	curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,$url);
	curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
	curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,5);
	$content = curl_exec($ch);
	curl_close($ch);
	return $content;
}

Pow! One quick script to get you all of the popular JavaScript libraries in 10 seconds. You may not know how to use each library but it sure doesn't hurt to have them around.

Recent Features

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Basic AJAX Requests Using MooTools 1.2

    AJAX has become a huge part of the modern web and that wont change in the foreseeable future. MooTools has made AJAX so simple that a rookie developer can get their dynamic pages working in no time. Step 1: The XHTML Here we define two links...

  • By
    prefers-color-scheme: CSS Media Query

    One device and app feature I've come to appreciate is the ability to change between light and dark modes. If you've ever done late night coding or reading, you know how amazing a dark theme can be for preventing eye strain and the headaches that result.

Discussion

  1. I should note that I run this from the command line.

  2. Mohamed Jama

    Nice script David! did you redesign your site?! keep up the good work mate :)

  3. Nice reminder to think things through and do the extra mile to save time in the future.

    The url has changed in the last four years: https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries/devguide. Seems people at google don’t know how to put a permanent redirect into place…

    Regards,

    pepebe

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!