Sorry Datal, from your original post I didn't realize that what you were trying to do was so complicated. I don't know if PHP has tools for doing that--I was only addressing whether or not it could fetch remote data using HTTP.
I do have to wonder if you really want to be doing this sort of thing on the fly though. Good etiquette dictates that you shouldn't be hitting a site more than once or twice a minute with automated software (and you should check robots.txt too), so what you are describing seems like it would be horribly slow from the user's perspective.
Bill Dimm,
SaveTheFreeWeb.com
