Difficulty getting google plus one count

Question

I have been searching all over the internet on how to get programaticaly google plus one button count. Finally i found this article Here is the Php Script mentioned in the

Answer 1

The cURL and API way listed in the other posts here no longer works.

There is still at least 1 method, but it's ugly and Google clearly doesn't support it. You just rip the variable out of the JavaScript source code for the official button with a regular expression:

function shinra_gplus_get_count( $url ) {
    $contents = file_get_contents( 
        'https://plusone.google.com/_/+1/fastbutton?url=' 
        . urlencode( $url ) 
    );

    preg_match( '/window\.__SSR = {c: ([\d]+)/', $contents, $matches );

    if( isset( $matches[0] ) ) 
        return (int) str_replace( 'window.__SSR = {c: ', '', $matches[0] );
    return 0;
}