i have this content on an external URL:
{"sEcho":null,"iTotalRecords":97,"iTotalDisplayRecords":97,"aaData":[["<a href='#' onClick='return numberPortingShow(\"10621\");'><img border='0' class='tableImage' src='/ControlPanel/Images/Icon/application_view_icons.png' alt='View Porting Details' title='View Porting Details'/></a> <a href='#' onClick='return numberPortingShow(\"10621\");'>0123456789</a>","<a href='/ViewAccount?account_no=20726' target='_blank'>20726</a>","Single Analogue","19/05/2015 14:30","29/05/2015 17:00","Complete”],["<a href='#' onClick='return numberPortingShow(\"10621\");'><img border='0' class='tableImage' src='/ControlPanel/Images/Icon/application_view_icons.png' alt='View Porting Details' title='View Porting Details'/></a> <a href='#' onClick='return numberPortingShow(\"10621\");'>0987654321</a>","<a href='/ViewAccount?account_no=20726' target='_blank'>20726</a>","Single Analogue","19/05/2015 14:30","29/05/2015 17:00","Complete"]]}
how can i loop through this data in PHP, while reading it from an external URL
I think you need php curl, followed by json_decode.
References:
Your data looks like JSON string so use json_decode() and iterate over it.
$data = '{"sEcho":null,"iTotalRecords":97,"iTotalDisplayRecords":97,"aaData":[["<a href='#' onClick='return numberPortingShow(\"10621\");'><img border='0' class='tableImage' src='/ControlPanel/Images/Icon/application_view_icons.png' alt='View Porting Details' title='View Porting Details'/></a> <a href='#' onClick='return numberPortingShow(\"10621\");'>0123456789</a>","<a href='/ViewAccount?account_no=20726' target='_blank'>20726</a>","Single Analogue","19/05/2015 14:30","29/05/2015 17:00","Complete"],["<a href='#' onClick='return numberPortingShow(\"10621\");'><img border='0' class='tableImage' src='/ControlPanel/Images/Icon/application_view_icons.png' alt='View Porting Details' title='View Porting Details'/></a> <a href='#' onClick='return numberPortingShow(\"10621\");'>0987654321</a>","<a href='/ViewAccount?account_no=20726' target='_blank'>20726</a>","Single Analogue","19/05/2015 14:30","29/05/2015 17:00","Complete"]]}';
$dataArray = json_decode($data, true);
foreach ($dataArray as $key => $value) {
var_dump($key);
var_dump($value);
}