Book info:Spidering Hacks
By Tara Calishain, Kevin Hemenway
O'Reilly Publications
ebook format: CHM
ISBN-10: 0-596-00577-6
There comes a time when surfing just isn't enough. It may be that you get sick of checking the Amazon rank of your favourite book, or you find a stash of images or media files that you want to download or maybe you find yourself endlessly cycling through the same set of sites day in a day out looking for specific pieces of data (stock prices, weather reports, news items, knitting patterns …). When that day dawns then that's when you start looking seriously at the different spidering options that are available to do away with the drudgery or to expand your reach. It should also be a day when you reach for 'Spidering Hacks', particularly if you're a Perl user or are prepared to dive in and learn.
As already mentioned, the hacks in this book mostly use Perl, though scattered here and there you'll find some Java, Python and PHP. If you really hate Perl, then this is not the place for you. On the other hand the authors assume only a rudimentary knowledge of Perl, and there is no requirement for any knowledge of network programming of any description. After the opening chapter which gives guidance of being a going spidering citizen (i.e. how to respect the sites you are sucking data from), there is a second chapter which details how to create a spidering toolkit (i.e. how to find and install the site of modules that many of the hacks depend on).
Download this book in digital format.
The Internet, with its profusion of information, has made us hungry for ever more, ever better data. Out of necessity, many of us have become pretty adept with search engine queries, but there are times when even the most powerful search engines aren’t enough. If you’ve ever wanted your data in a different form than it’s presented, or wanted to collect data from several sites and see it side-by-side without the constraints of a browser, then Spidering Hacks is for you. Spidering Hacks takes you to the next level in Internet data retrieval–beyond search engines–by showing you how to create spiders and bots to retrieve information from your favorite sites and data sources. You’ll no longer feel constrained by the way host sites think you want to see their data presented–you’ll learn how to scrape and repurpose raw data so you can view in a way that’s meaningful to you. Written for developers, researchers, technical assistants, librarians, and power users, Spidering Hacks provides expert tips on spidering and scraping methodologies. You’ll begin with a crash course in spidering concepts, tools (Perl, LWP, out-of-the-box utilities), and ethics (how to know when you’ve gone too far: what’s acceptable and unacceptable). Next, you’ll collect media files and data from databases. Then you’ll learn how to interpret and understand the data, repurpose it for use in other applications, and even build authorized interfaces to integrate the data into your own content. By the time you finish Spidering Hacks, you’ll be able to:
* Aggregate and associate data from disparate locations, then store and manipulate the data as you like
* Gain a competitive edge in business by knowing when competitors’ products are on sale, and comparing sales ranks and product placement on e-commerce sites
* Integrate third-party data into your own applications or web sites
* Make your own site easier to scrape and more usable to others
* Keep up-to-date with your favorite comics strips, news stories, stock tips, and more without visiting the site every day
Like the other books in O’Reilly’s popular Hacks series, Spidering Hacks brings you 100 industrial-strength tips and tools from the experts to help you master this technology. If you’re interested in data retrieval of any type, this book provides a wealth of data for finding a wealth of data.
http://rapidshare.com/files/60176160/spideringhacks.chm
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