How include external HTML into the Sidebar?

[larsbc4x4]

Another sidebar question...

I have a Coldfusion site and I'd like to include new content teasers from the main site into the sidebar of vBulletin 4.

Rather than write an RSS generator in Coldfusion, I'd prefer to just generate some simple HTML on my Coldfusion server, and have vBulletin "include" it into the sidebar. Would this be fairly easy? I tried doing an include() but it didn't work. (I've got very little PHP experience.)

Anyway, if my approach is feasible, could someone give me an idea of what PHP I should put in a sidebar block?

Assume that the external file is, say, "http://www.site.com/front-page-code.htm"

Thanks in advance for your help!

[ChopSuey]

<?php
// Get a file into an array. In this example we'll go through HTTP to get
// the HTML source of a URL.
$lines = file('http://www.example.com/');

// Loop through our array, show HTML source as HTML source; and line numbers too.
foreach ($lines as $line_num => $line) {
echo "Line #<b>{$line_num}</b> : " . htmlspecialchars($line) . "<br />\n";
}

// Another example, let's get a web page into a string. See also file_get_contents().
$html = implode('', file('http://www.example.com/'));

// Using the optional flags parameter since PHP 5
$trimmed = file('somefile.txt', FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES | FILE_SKIP_EMPTY_LINES);
?>


Something like that?

[larsbc4x4]

Yeah, that 2nd part might work for me. Thanks, I'll give it a try.

[paulnicholson]

How do I put the Facebook like box into the sidebar like this so the widget border doesn't wreck it?

eg:
<script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"></script><fb:like-box href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Theatre-Network/106563968572" width="255" height="1000" connections="100"></fb:like-box>