What are the system requirements for Simple HTML DOM?

Simple HTML DOM is a PHP library that enables you to navigate and manipulate HTML documents easily. It's designed to be lightweight and requires PHP 5.1+ or newer. Here are the basic system requirements for using Simple HTML DOM:

1. PHP Version: PHP 5.1 or greater is required for Simple HTML DOM to work. It can also work with PHP 7.x and PHP 8.x versions.

2. PHP Extensions: The following PHP extensions are typically needed for Simple HTML DOM to function correctly:

   • libxml - Used for parsing XML and HTML content.
   • mbstring (optional but recommended) - Provides multibyte string functions that can be helpful if you are dealing with different encodings.

3. Memory Limit: Depending on the size of the HTML documents you are working with, you might need to increase PHP's memory limit. Simple HTML DOM tends to be memory-intensive because it loads the entire DOM into memory. You can adjust the memory limit in your php.ini file:

   memory_limit = 128M ; or higher if necessary

Alternatively, you can set it at runtime using the ini_set function in PHP:

   ini_set('memory_limit', '128M'); // or higher if necessary

1. Execution Time: If you're processing large files or complex operations, you might also need to increase the maximum execution time. This can be done in the php.ini file:

   max_execution_time = 300 ; value in seconds

Or at runtime using the set_time_limit function:

   set_time_limit(300); // value in seconds

1. Web Server: While Simple HTML DOM does not require any specific web server, it should work with any web server that supports PHP, such as Apache, Nginx, or IIS.

2. Operating System: Simple HTML DOM is platform-independent and should work on any operating system that can run PHP, including Windows, macOS, Linux, and Unix-based systems.

3. Composer (optional): If you prefer to install PHP packages via Composer, you can include Simple HTML DOM as a dependency in your composer.json file. This is not a system requirement per se, but a tool to manage the library's installation and updates:

   {
     "require": {
       "simplehtmldom/simplehtmldom": "2.0-RC2"
     }
   }

Then run the Composer command to install the package:

   composer require simplehtmldom/simplehtmldom

Installation of Simple HTML DOM is typically done by including the simple_html_dom.php file in your PHP script, which you can get from the Simple HTML DOM project's website or through Composer. Here's an example of how to include it in your PHP script:

require_once 'simple_html_dom.php';

With the above requirements met, you should be able to use Simple HTML DOM to scrape and manipulate HTML content within your PHP applications. Remember to abide by the terms of service and robots.txt of websites when scraping their content.