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

  • By
    Create a CSS Cube

    CSS cubes really showcase what CSS has become over the years, evolving from simple color and dimension directives to a language capable of creating deep, creative visuals.  Add animation and you've got something really neat.  Unfortunately each CSS cube tutorial I've read is a bit...

  • By
    Camera and Video Control with HTML5

    Client-side APIs on mobile and desktop devices are quickly providing the same APIs.  Of course our mobile devices got access to some of these APIs first, but those APIs are slowly making their way to the desktop.  One of those APIs is the getUserMedia API...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Checkbox Filtering Using MooTools ElementFilter

    When I first wrote MooTools ElementFilter, I didn't think much of it. Fast forward eight months later and I've realized I've used the plugin a billion times. Hell, even one of the "big 3" search engines is using it for their maps application.

  • By
    JavaScript Copy to Clipboard

    "Copy to clipboard" functionality is something we all use dozens of times daily but the client side API around it has always been lacking; some older APIs and browser implementations required a scary "are you sure?"-style dialog before the content would be copied to clipboard -- not great for...

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!