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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/jessebyarugaba/Unofficial-Uganda-Securities-Exhange-API/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

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About this changelog

This page tracks notable changes, updates, and improvements to the Uganda Securities Exchange API library. The library utilizes Simple HTML DOM Parser for web scraping functionality.
This project follows semantic versioning principles and is based on Keep a Changelog format.

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Current version

The Uganda Securities Exchange API library is built on top of Simple HTML DOM Parser. For the complete changelog of the underlying parser library, see the sections below.

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Core functionality

The library provides four main methods:
  1. getAllPortfolioCompanies() - Retrieves all companies listed on the USE
  2. getCompanyDetails($companyName) - Fetches detailed information for a specific company
  3. getPortfolioCompanyData($companyName) - Gets historical price data for plotting and analysis
  4. getExchangeRateDetails() - Retrieves current UGX to USD exchange rate
The library requires PHP >= 5.6 and the ext-iconv extension.

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Simple HTML DOM Parser changelog

The underlying HTML parsing functionality is provided by Simple HTML DOM Parser. Below are the major versions and their changes.

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Unreleased

Changed:
  • Comments that start with > or -> are now considered malformed in accordance with section 12.1.6 of the HTML specification
  • Comments may still contain the strings <!-- or --!> and may still end with <!- contrary to the specification

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Version 2.0-RC2 (2019-11-09)

This is a release candidate version. Some features might not yet be stable or may emit unexpected behavior.
Added:
  • README and composer file support
  • Travis CI integration for automated unit tests
  • Magic method __debugInfo to reduce memory footprint and prevent recursion errors
  • Magic method __call as wrapper for deprecated lowercase methods
  • New Debug class for deprecated functions and parsing issues
  • Full support for script element parsing
  • Multiple new unit tests for attributes, callbacks, debug info, doctypes, scripts, styles, and DOM manipulation
Changed:
  • Improved garbage collection with better destructor implementation
  • Enhanced handling of literal elements (script, style, cdata, comment, code)
  • Renamed unit test files to match new class names
Deprecated:
  • HtmlDocument::clear() - Use unset() instead
  • HtmlDocument::load_file() - Use HtmlDocument::loadFile() instead
  • HtmlNode::children() - Use HtmlNode::childNodes() instead
  • HtmlNode::first_child() - Use HtmlNode::firstChild() instead
  • HtmlNode::has_child() - Use HtmlNode::hasChild() instead
  • HtmlNode::last_child() - Use HtmlNode::lastChild() instead
  • HtmlNode::next_sibling() - Use HtmlNode::nextSibling() instead
  • HtmlNode::prev_sibling() - Use HtmlNode::previousSibling() instead
  • Smarty script support
  • Server-side script support
Fixed:
  • Boolean attributes incorrectly represented with value “1” when saving DOM
  • Infinite loop bug with comments and CDATA containing script/style/code tags
  • Whitespace removal in comments and CDATA with $stripRN = true
  • Attribute value encoding in outertext(), innertext(), and save()
  • Charset encoding issues #178
  • DOM manipulation bugs with createElement(), createTextNode(), and appendChild()

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Version 2.0-RC1 (2019-10-20)

Added:
  • Comprehensive unit test suite
  • Optional $trim argument to $node->text()
  • Attribute value normalization per W3C standards
  • Automatic HTML entity decoding when loading documents
  • Negation pseudo-class support (:not())
  • simple_html_dom::expect() and simple_html_dom_node::expect() methods
  • CDATA section parsing
  • HtmlWeb class for direct webpage loading via cURL or fopen
  • New classes in simplehtmldom namespace: HtmlDocument, HtmlNode, HtmlWeb
  • New element type HDOM_TYPE_CDATA
Changed:
  • Increased MAX_FILE_SIZE from 0.6 MB to 2.5 MiB
  • Enhanced text() method to support all block/inline elements
  • Improved handling of &nbsp characters
  • Moved classes to proper namespace structure
  • Constants moved to separate file
Fixed:
  • Fatal error when removing nodes from DOM (#172)
  • UTF-8 character handling in text() method
  • File size validation in file_get_html
  • UTF-8 to UTF-8 conversion bug
  • Optional closing tag handling
  • Text node support in find() method (#175)

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Version 1.9 (2019-05-30)

Added:
  • Unit tests for bugs #153, #163, #166, #169
  • Character set support for UTF-8, CP1251, CP1252 (#142)
  • Meta charset detection
  • CP1251 detection using iconv
  • MIT LICENSE file
  • New HtmlNode methods:
    • remove() - Recursively remove node from DOM
    • removeChild() - Remove child node
    • hasClass() - Check for class name
    • addClass() - Add classes
    • removeClass() - Remove classes
    • save() - Save node to disk
Changed:
  • Documentation migrated to MkDocs
Fixed:
  • Warning when clearing DOM on null nodes (#153)
  • Missing whitespace in plaintext (#163)
  • Duplicate attribute detection (#166)
  • CP1252 (ISO-8859-1) detection (#142)
  • Next-sibling combinator error on last child
  • Selector parsing for attributes ending with “s” or “i” (#169)

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Version 1.8 (2019-01-13)

Added:
  • CSS combinator support:
    • Child combinator (>)
    • Next sibling combinator (+)
    • Subsequent sibling combinator (~)
  • Multiclass selectors (.class.class.class)
  • Multi-attribute selectors ([attr1][attr2])
  • Attribute selector enhancements:
    • Pipe selector (|=)
    • Tilde selector (~=)
    • Case sensitivity (i and s)
  • PHP_CodeSniffer coding standards
  • PHP 5.6+ compatibility tests
  • Comprehensive CSS selector unit tests
  • Configurable constants support
Changed:
  • Removed automatic ‘tbody’ filtering (#79)
  • Applied PHP_CodeSniffer standards
Fixed:
  • CSS selector attributes with value “0” (#62)
  • Forward slashes in CSS selectors (#144)
  • Universal selectors
  • load_file functionality

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Version 1.7 (2018-12-10)

Added:
  • Comprehensive code documentation
  • Extensive unit test coverage
  • Bit flags for load() method:
    • HDOM_SMARTY_AS_TEXT - Filter Smarty scripts (#154)
  • Support for attributes without whitespace separation
  • Automated build script for releases
Changed:
  • Updated self-closing tags list (added area, col, meta, param, source, track, wbr)
  • Updated optional closing tags list (improved td/th/optgroup/option/rp/rt handling)
  • Script tag removal before newline processing
  • Improved performance (10-25% faster)
  • Default $offset changed from -1 to 0 (#161)
  • Normalized line endings to LF
Deprecated:
  • str_get_html() - Use new simple_html_dom() instead
Fixed:
  • PHP 7.3 compatibility
  • Incorrectly escaped text handling (#160)
  • $maxLen functionality in file_get_html()
  • Cross-script error interference

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Earlier versions

Version 1.6 (2014-05-28):
  • Node insertion and creation
  • Noise array search capability
Version 1.5 (2012-09-10):
  • LOCK_EX flag for file operations
  • Character set detection
  • Memory leak fixes
Version 1.11 (2008-12-14):
  • Firebug-generated XPath support
  • New dump method and xmltext attribute
  • Pre tag and various bug fixes
Version 1.10 (2008-10-25):
  • Negative indexes in find method
  • Automatic content loading
  • Full wildcard support
Version 1.00 (2008-09-05):
  • getAllAttributes method
  • JavaScript string support in selectors
  • Case-insensitive *= selector
See the full CHANGELOG for complete version history.

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Usage notes

Important: Use of this API for production purposes requires approval from the Uganda Securities Commission. Visit their website and contact them via email before deploying to production.
  1. Always clean up DOM objects: 
    $html->clear();
unset($html);
  2. Use camelCase methods instead of deprecated snake_case: 
    // Preferred
$html->loadFile($url);
$node->firstChild();

// Deprecated
$html->load_file($url);
$node->first_child();
  3. Implement error handling: 
    if (!$html) {
    error_log('Failed to load HTML');
    return false;
}
  4. Monitor memory usage for large documents: 
    ini_set('memory_limit', '256M');

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Migration notes

If you’re updating from an older version of Simple HTML DOM Parser:
Review the deprecated methods list and update your code to use the new camelCase naming convention.
Key changes to be aware of:
  • Method names changed from snake_case to camelCase
  • Some methods have been deprecated or removed
  • Improved memory management requires proper cleanup
  • Enhanced CSS selector support
  • Better UTF-8 and character encoding handling

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Future development

Potential enhancements for future versions:
  • Caching layer to reduce server requests
  • Rate limiting for responsible web scraping
  • WebSocket support for real-time data
  • REST API wrapper
  • Database integration examples
  • Docker containerization
  • Comprehensive test suite specific to USE data
Contributions and suggestions for improvements are welcome! See the Contributing guide to get involved.

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Resources