Changelog

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.

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.

Core functionality

The library provides four main methods:

getAllPortfolioCompanies() - Retrieves all companies listed on the USE
getCompanyDetails($companyName) - Fetches detailed information for a specific company
getPortfolioCompanyData($companyName) - Gets historical price data for plotting and analysis
getExchangeRateDetails() - Retrieves current UGX to USD exchange rate

The library requires PHP >= 5.6 and the ext-iconv extension.

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.

Unreleased

View unreleased changes

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

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.

View 2.0-RC2 changes

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()

Version 2.0-RC1 (2019-10-20)

View 2.0-RC1 changes

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)

Version 1.9 (2019-05-30)

View 1.9 changes

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)

Version 1.8 (2019-01-13)

View 1.8 changes

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

Version 1.7 (2018-12-10)

View 1.7 changes

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

Earlier versions

Versions 1.6 and earlier

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.

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.

Recommended practices

Always clean up DOM objects:
```
$html->clear();
unset($html);
```

Use camelCase methods instead of deprecated snake_case:

// Preferred
$html->loadFile($url);
$node->firstChild();

// Deprecated
$html->load_file($url);
$node->first_child();

Implement error handling:

if (!$html) {
    error_log('Failed to load HTML');
    return false;
}

Monitor memory usage for large documents:
```
ini_set('memory_limit', '256M');
```

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

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.

Get Started

Core Concepts

API Reference

Examples

Resources

About this changelog

Current version

Core functionality

Simple HTML DOM Parser changelog

Unreleased

Version 2.0-RC2 (2019-11-09)

Version 2.0-RC1 (2019-10-20)

Version 1.9 (2019-05-30)

Version 1.8 (2019-01-13)

Version 1.7 (2018-12-10)

Earlier versions

Usage notes

Recommended practices

Migration notes

Future development

Resources

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

Get Started

Core Concepts

API Reference

Examples

Resources

Documentation Index

​About this changelog

​Current version

​Core functionality

​Simple HTML DOM Parser changelog

​Unreleased

​Version 2.0-RC2 (2019-11-09)

​Version 2.0-RC1 (2019-10-20)

​Version 1.9 (2019-05-30)

​Version 1.8 (2019-01-13)

​Version 1.7 (2018-12-10)

​Earlier versions

​Usage notes

​Recommended practices

​Migration notes

​Future development

​Resources

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

About this changelog

Current version

Core functionality

Simple HTML DOM Parser changelog

Unreleased

Version 2.0-RC2 (2019-11-09)

Version 2.0-RC1 (2019-10-20)

Version 1.9 (2019-05-30)

Version 1.8 (2019-01-13)

Version 1.7 (2018-12-10)

Earlier versions

Usage notes

Recommended practices

Migration notes

Future development

Resources