Description
The internet is bigger and better than what a mere brower allows. Webbots, Spiders, and Screen Scrapers is for developers and business managers looking to unlock the competitive advantages of nontraditional online approaches. Readers will learn how to write stealthy webbots that read email, emulate online forms, auto-authenticate, manage cookies, and handle encryption. Sample projects reinforce these new skills so that readers can create more sophisticated webbots and spiders to track online prices, create anonymous browing environments, bid on auctions in their closing moments, and more.
Full Description
The Internet is bigger and better than what a mere browser allows.
Webbots, Spiders, and Screen Scrapers is for programmers and businesspeople who want to take full advantage of the vast resources available on the Web. There's no reason to let browsers limit your online experience-especially when you can easily automate online tasks to suit your individual needs.
Learn how to write webbots and spiders that do all this and more:
Programmatically download entire websites
Effectively parse data from web pages
Manage cookies
Decode encrypted files
Automate form submissions
Send and receive email
Send SMS alerts to your cell phone
Unlock password-protected websites
Automatically bid in online auctions
Exchange data with FTP and NNTP servers
Sample projects using standard code libraries reinforce these new skills. You'll learn how to create your own webbots and spiders that track online prices, aggregate different data sources into a single web page, and archive the online data you just can't live without. You'll learn inside information from an experienced webbot developer on how and when to write stealthy webbots that mimic human behavior, tips for developing fault-tolerant designs, and various methods for launching and scheduling webbots. You'll also get advice on how to write webbots and spiders that respect website owner property rights, plus techniques for shielding websites from unwanted robots.
As a bonus, visit the author's website to test your webbots on sample target pages, and to download the scripts and code libraries used in the book.
Some tasks are just too tedious-or too important!- to leave to humans. Once you've automated your online life, you'll never let a browser limit the way you use the Internet again.
