- Webbots, Spiders, and Screen Scrapers
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Introduction
- I. FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES
- 1. WHAT'S IN IT FOR YOU?
- 2. IDEAS FOR WEBBOT PROJECTS
- 3. DOWNLOADING WEB PAGES
- 4. PARSING TECHNIQUES
- 5. AUTOMATING FORM SUBMISSION
- 6. MANAGING LARGE AMOUNTS OF DATA
- II. PROJECTS
- 7. PRICE-MONITORING WEBBOTS
- 8. IMAGE-CAPTURING WEBBOTS
- 9. LINK-VERIFICATION WEBBOTS
- 10. ANONYMOUS BROWSING WEBBOTS
- 11. SEARCH-RANKING WEBBOTS
- 12. AGGREGATION WEBBOTS
- 13. FTP WEBBOTS
- 14. NNTP NEWS WEBBOTS
- 15. WEBBOTS THAT READ EMAIL
- 16. WEBBOTS THAT SEND EMAIL
- 17. CONVERTING A WEBSITE INTO A FUNCTION
- III. ADVANCED TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS
- 18. SPIDERS
- 19. PROCUREMENT WEBBOTS AND SNIPERS
- 20. WEBBOTS AND CRYPTOGRAPHY
- 21. AUTHENTICATION
- 22. ADVANCED COOKIE MANAGEMENT
- 23. SCHEDULING WEBBOTS AND SPIDERS
- IV. LARGER CONSIDERATIONS
- 24. DESIGNING STEALTHY WEBBOTS AND SPIDERS
- 25. WRITING FAULT-TOLERANT WEBBOTS
- 26. DESIGNING WEBBOT-FRIENDLY WEBSITES
- 27. KILLING SPIDERS
- 28. KEEPING WEBBOTS OUT OF TROUBLE
- A. PHP/CURL REFERENCE
- Creating a Minimal PHP/CURL Session
- Initiating PHP/CURL Sessions
- Setting PHP/CURL Options
- CURLOPT_URL
- CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER
- CURLOPT_REFERER
- CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION and CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS
- CURLOPT_USERAGENT
- CURLOPT_NOBODY and CURLOPT_HEADER
- CURLOPT_TIMEOUT
- CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE and CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR
- CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER
- CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER
- CURLOPT_USERPWD and CURLOPT_UNRESTRICTED_AUTH
- CURLOPT_POST and CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS
- CURLOPT_VERBOSE
- CURLOPT_PORT
- Executing the PHP/CURL Command
- Closing PHP/CURL Sessions
- B. STATUS CODES
- C. SMS EMAIL ADDRESSES
- About the Author
- Colophon
The true power of webbots is that they can make decisions and take action with the information they find online. Here are a few suggestions for extending what you've learned to do with RSS or other data you choose to aggregate with your webbots.
Modify the script in Listing 12-8 to accept stories that don't contain a keyword.
Write an aggregation webbot that doesn't display information unless it finds it on two or more sources.
Design a webbot that looks for specific keywords in news stories and sends an email notification when those keywords appear.
Search blogs for spelling errors.
Find an RSS feed that posts scores from your favorite sports team. Parse and store the scores in a database for later statistical analysis.
Write a webbot that uses news stories to help you decided whether to buy or sell commodities futures.
Devise an online clipping service that archives information about your company.
Create an RSS feed for the example store used in Chapter 7.
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