Using PHP to Scrape the Report Card from a Code School Profile – Part 2

Earlier this week, I described how to use PHP to scrape the report card from a Code School profile. Now, it must be displayed. I chose to display mine in the sidebar of my blog. To do this, jQuery and CSS will be your friends. It’s pretty simple, and this isn’t the only way to do it. However, in this implementation, it is important that the name of the querystring parameter used in the PHP script (in this case, “nick”) matches the one in the jQuery function call below. Likewise, the id attribute of the div element must also match the one in the jQuery statement.

(Update: the CSS code below should be updated in accordance with this change to prevent bullets from appearing between the badges in the “Master Status” section.)

<style>
#codeschool {
   text-align: center;
   vertical-align: middle;
}

.badge-img {
   display:block !important;
   margin-left: auto;
   margin-right: auto;
}

.pr-avatar {
   display:block;
   margin-left: auto;
   margin-right: auto;
   margin-bottom: 10px;
}
</style>
<div id="codeschool">
</div>
<br />
<script>
(function($) {
$("#codeschool").load("/codeschool/codeschool.php?nick=DeepInTheCode");
})(jQuery);
</script>

Well, that’s it. If you debug the client-side code on both your page and the Code School profile page, you’ll see that there are path elements in the Code School script that cause the partial opacity on uncompleted paths. This is presumably done with other JavaScripts and CSS on the Code School site. I haven’t tried bringing that functionality here as yet. Perhaps for another time…

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