Html download challenge
 

I've spent days poking around the internet, reading help information, trying
to find working source code but no luck so far.

My problem, on the surface and to someone who knows what he/she is doing,
should be easy to solve.

All I want to do is download the HTML from the following url:

http://www.google.com/search?q=business

Sounds simple. I can type that into a browser and I will get a page full of
information. I try to download that using a Java program, and the server
seems to know I am not a browser (my code works with other Urls just fine).
I figure I need to pass some sort of header information or something so that
I appear to be a browser.

So, what I'm looking for, if anyone is up to the challenge, is a small piece
of Java source code that is capable of downloading the HTML from the above
mentioned url and printing it to the screen.

On my own, I think I'm looking at a pretty big learning curve (low level
HTTP protocol) to sort this out.

Any help is of course greatly appreciated.

Re: Html download challenge
 

you are probably doing something else wrong. I just tried with telnet,
and it works.
Just to be sure, do the following:

telnet www.google.com 80

get http://www.google.com/search?q=business http/1.1
<return a second time>

you should get the page


Paul Battersby wrote:
> I've spent days poking around the internet, reading help information, trying
> to find working source code but no luck so far.
>
> My problem, on the surface and to someone who knows what he/she is doing,
> should be easy to solve.
>
> All I want to do is download the HTML from the following url:
>
> http://www.google.com/search?q=business
>
> Sounds simple. I can type that into a browser and I will get a page full of
> information. I try to download that using a Java program, and the server
> seems to know I am not a browser (my code works with other Urls just fine).
> I figure I need to pass some sort of header information or something so that
> I appear to be a browser.
>
> So, what I'm looking for, if anyone is up to the challenge, is a small piece
> of Java source code that is capable of downloading the HTML from the above
> mentioned url and printing it to the screen.
>
> On my own, I think I'm looking at a pretty big learning curve (low level
> HTTP protocol) to sort this out.
>
> Any help is of course greatly appreciated.
>
>

Re: Html download challenge
 

Thanks but I don't really understand. I need to be able to do this within a
java program. I think what you've suggested is using a telnet application.

"Andrea Desole" <news@desole.demon.NO.SPAM.PLEASE.nl> wrote in message
news:9a316$42c3f740$d468cb3c$1383@nf1.news-service.com...
> you are probably doing something else wrong. I just tried with telnet,
> and it works.
> Just to be sure, do the following:
>
> telnet www.google.com 80
>
> get http://www.google.com/search?q=business http/1.1
> <return a second time>
>
> you should get the page
>

Re: Html download challenge
 

Paul Battersby wrote:
> I've spent days poking around the internet, reading help information, trying
> to find working source code but no luck so far.
>
> My problem, on the surface and to someone who knows what he/she is doing,
> should be easy to solve.
>
> All I want to do is download the HTML from the following url:
>
> http://www.google.com/search?q=business
>
> Sounds simple. I can type that into a browser and I will get a page full of
> information. I try to download that using a Java program, and the server
> seems to know I am not a browser (my code works with other Urls just fine).
> I figure I need to pass some sort of header information or something so that
> I appear to be a browser.
>
> So, what I'm looking for, if anyone is up to the challenge, is a small piece
> of Java source code that is capable of downloading the HTML from the above
> mentioned url and printing it to the screen.
>
> On my own, I think I'm looking at a pretty big learning curve (low level
> HTTP protocol) to sort this out.
>
> Any help is of course greatly appreciated.
>
>

There is an alternative approach. Google has a Java API. See
http://www.google.com/apis/.

The licensing limits you to 1000 queries per day, and specifies
personal, non-commercial use only. I assume they are trying to prevent
anyone from constructing a rival search site with their own ads but
Google's search results.

As long as you meet the licensing restrictions, it is MUCH easier to
access the results using their API than by trying to parse their web
pages, even if you can get hold of them.

Patricia

Re: Html download challenge
 

> Google has a Java API

Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. That might be what I end up doing but I would
like to avoid any limitations it imposes.

> MUCH easier to access the results using their API than by trying to parse
their web

Parsing their web page, I can already do. That part was easy. Downloading
the HTML outside of a browser I can't do. I know that what I want to do is
possible. HotJava does it (a browser written in Java). Unfortunately the
source code is not available so I can't see how it is done.


"Patricia Shanahan" <pats@acm.org> wrote in message
news:jQSwe.11335$hK3.541@newsread3.news.pas.earthl ink.net...

> There is an alternative approach. Google has a Java API. See
> http://www.google.com/apis/.
>
> The licensing limits you to 1000 queries per day, and specifies
> personal, non-commercial use only. I assume they are trying to prevent
> anyone from constructing a rival search site with their own ads but
> Google's search results.
>
> As long as you meet the licensing restrictions, it is MUCH easier to
> access the results using their API than by trying to parse their web
> pages, even if you can get hold of them.
>
> Patricia

Re: Html download challenge
 

Paul Battersby wrote:
> Thanks but I don't really understand. I need to be able to do this within a
> java program. I think what you've suggested is using a telnet application.

not really. What I'm saying is that, since it works using telnet, it
also has to work with a regular java URL connection without adding any
extra information. In my telnet I only used a get request; no special
headers.
At the beginning I thought that Google might check something like the
user-agent header, but now I find it hard to believe it doesn't work.
Maybe I'll try later on with a Java application

Re: Html download challenge
 

That would be my guess, yes. The secret that I have been unable to uncover
is what properties do I need to set to make it work.

"Tor Iver Wilhelmsen" <jadedgamer@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ull4rriv4.fsf@hotmail.com...
> "Paul Battersby" <batman42ca@yahoo.ca> writes:
>
> > I figure I need to pass some sort of header information or something so
that
> > I appear to be a browser.
>
> So you are looking for URLConnection.setRequestProperty("User-Agent",
> "some browser string").

Re: Html download challenge
 

"Paul Battersby" <batman42ca@yahoo.ca> writes:

> I figure I need to pass some sort of header information or something so that
> I appear to be a browser.

So you are looking for URLConnection.setRequestProperty("User-Agent",
"some browser string").

Re: Html download challenge
 

"Andrea Desole" <news@desole.demon.NO.SPAM.PLEASE.nl> wrote in message
news:d3c7b$42c3fe4d$d468cb3c$2771@nf1.news-service.com...

> I find it hard to believe it doesn't work.
> Maybe I'll try later on with a Java application

Here is some sample code. You will see me loading from 2 urls. The first one
works. The second (the one I care about) does not even though my browser
(Internet Explorer) has no trouble with the url.

I get this error:

Exception in thread "main" java.io.IOException: Server returned HTTP
response co
de: 403 for URL: http://www.google.com/search?q=business
at
sun.net.http://www.protocol.http.HttpURLConn...Stream(Unknown So
urce)
at java.net.URL.openStream(Unknown Source)
at SimpleTest.loadPage(SimpleTest.java:14)
at SimpleTest.main(SimpleTest.java:30)

If you can see something simple that I'm doing wrong, that would be great.

// -------------------- program begins

import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;

public class SimpleTest {

public String loadPage(String webAddr) throws Exception {
String inputLine;
BufferedReader in;
URL targetUrl;

targetUrl = new URL(webAddr);
StringBuffer htmlString = new StringBuffer();

in = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader(
targetUrl.openStream()));

while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null) {
htmlString.append(inputLine);
}

return htmlString.toString();

}

static public void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
SimpleTest test = new SimpleTest();

System.out.println("----------------------------------------------");
System.out.println(test.loadPage("http://google.com"));
System.out.println("----------------------------------------------");

System.out.println(test.loadPage("http://google.com/search?q=business"));

}
}

// ------------ program ends

Re: Html download challenge
 

On Thu, 30 Jun 2005 09:26:38 -0400, "Paul Battersby"
<batman42ca@yahoo.ca> wrote or quoted :

>Sounds simple. I can type that into a browser and I will get a page full of
>information. I try to download that using a Java program, and the server
>seems to know I am not a browser (my code works with other Urls just fine).
>I figure I need to pass some sort of header information or something so that
>I appear to be a browser.

Use http://mindprod.com/jgloss/ethereal.com to see what sort of get
packets the browser is composing. Just pad your header with those crap
fields and they will have no way of knowing you are not a browser.

I did some screenscraping and I eventually got caught. I was just too
regular. I did not even know they would object.

Why do people publicly post information if they don't want you to make
use of it.

see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/urlconnection for how to write such
code. This is very old code that uses low level.


here is a little one shot scraper I did that I no longer use.

/* Oanda complained, so I had to discontinue this.
* Requests a currency conversion from Oanda.com
* I prentend to be a browser, get the page and extract the part I
want.
* copyright (c) 1998-2005 Roedy Green, Canadian Mind Products
* #327 - 964 Heywood Avenue
* Victoria, BC Canada V8V 2Y5
* tel: (250) 361-9093
* mailto:roedyg@mindprod.com
* http://mindprod.com
*/
package com.mindprod.currcon;
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.io.FileWriter;
import java.io.IOException;

import com.mindprod.voter.CGIRequest;
import com.mindprod.voter.CGIget;

public class Oanda
{


private static final String EmbeddedCopyright =
"copyright (c) 2003-2005 Roedy Green, Canadian Mind Products,
http://mindprod.com";

// c o n f i g u r a t i o n s t r i n g s


/**
* Site URL to process the cgi script. without http:// on front
*/
final static String host = "www.oanda.com";

/**
* Name of CGI Script to process this vote, namely the ACTION
parameter, without host.
* absolute name on host.
*/
final static String relativeURL = "/convert/fxdaily";

/**
* get list of currencies to fetch, and glue them together
separated with underscores.
*
* @return String of currency codes wanted, separated
* by underscores. e.g. CAD_USD_EUR
*/
public static String getWantedCurrencies () throws IOException
{
BufferedReader r = new BufferedReader ( new FileReader (
"oanda.wanted" ), 4096 );
StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer ( 700 );
String line;
while ( ( line = r.readLine () ) != null )
{
sb.append ( "_" );
sb.append ( line );
}
return sb.toString().substring( 1 );
}


/**
* extract the useful CSV info out of the web page.
*
* @param haystack the entire webpage
* @return Extracted goodies, just the CSV data.
*/
static String extractGoodies ( String haystack )
{
/* Result that comes back in embedded a large web page.
We find it by
<PRE><font face=Verdana size=2>Currency,Code,USD/1 Unit,Units/1
USD

Canadian Dollar,CAD,0.7283,1.3737
Swiss Franc,CHF,0.7739,1.2933
British Pound,GBP,1.6325,0.6127
Japanese Yen,JPY,0.008562,116.9
</TD></TR></font></PRE>
*/
String lookFor = "<PRE><font face=Verdana
size=2>Currency,Code,USD/1 Unit,Units/1 USD";
int startGoodies = haystack.indexOf( lookFor );
if ( startGoodies < 0 )
{
System.out.println("failure. Oanda format change.");
System.exit(1);
return null;
}
else
{
// bypass junk on front
haystack = haystack.substring( startGoodies +
lookFor.length() + 2 );
int endGoodies = haystack.indexOf( "</TD>" );
if ( endGoodies < 0 )
{
System.out.println("failure. Oanda format change.");
System.exit(1);
return null;
}
return haystack.substring( 0, endGoodies );
}
}

/**
* Save the results in the oanda.csv file.
*
* @param result Results to save, in csv format.
*
* @exception IOException
*/
static void save ( String result ) throws IOException
{
// save result in oand.csv ready for further processing.
FileWriter w = new FileWriter ( "oanda.csv" );
w.write( result );
w.close();
}
/**
* Connect and send request
*/
public static void main (String[] args)
{
try
{
String currencies = getWantedCurrencies();

// prepare http parms to server and get return data
CGIRequest p = new CGIRequest( 2000 );
// order appears to matter.
p.appendCGIPair( "value", "1" );
// leave out date to get today's date.
p.appendCGIPair( "date_fmt", "jp" );
p.appendCGIPair( "redirected", "1" );
p.appendCGIPair( "result", "1" );
p.appendCGIPair( "lang", "en" );
p.appendCGIPair( "exch", "USD" );
p.appendCGIPair( "exch2", "" );
p.appendCGIPair( "expr2", "" );
p.appendCGIPair( "format", "CSV" );
p.appendCGIPair( "dest", "Get Table" );
p.appendCGIPair( "sel_list", currencies );
String parms = p.toString();

System.out.println( "sending request to oanda.com. Please be
patient." );

// ask oanda for exchange rates on given list of currencies.
String haystack = CGIget.get( host, relativeURL, parms );

/* extract good stuff from the whole web page */
String result = extractGoodies ( haystack );

System.out.println( result );

save ( result );
}
catch ( IOException e )
{
System.out.println(e);
}
} // end class Main
} // end class Oanda


// Class com/mindprod/voter/CGIget.java
// copyright (c) 1998-2005 Roedy Green, Canadian Mind Products
// based on work by Jonathan Revusky

// To encode strings use java.net.URLEncoder.encode;
// and Java.net.URLDecoder.decode or CGIRequest.
/*
* copyright (c) 1998-2005
* Roedy Green
* Canadian Mind Products
* #327 - 964 Heywood Avenue
* Victoria, BC Canada V8V 2Y5
* tel: (250) 361-9093
* mailto:roedyg@mindprod.com
* http://mindprod.com
*/
// Version 1.0

package com.mindprod.voter;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.OutputStream;
import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
import java.net.Socket;
import java.net.URL;

/**
* simulates a browser posting a form to CGI via GET.
*/
public class CGIget
{
/**
* Static only. Prevent instantiation.
*/
private CGIget()
{
}
/**
* Send a formful of data to the CGI host using GET.
*
* @param websiteURL URL of the website
* @param relativeURL
* relative URL of the document/CGI desired
* Absolute begin with /.
*
* @param parms parms to send, encoded with URLEncoder
*
* @return CGI host's response with headers and embedded length
fields stripped
* @exception IOException
*/
public static String get( String websiteURL, String relativeURL,
String parms ) throws IOException
{
// O P E N

URL url = new URL ( "http://" + websiteURL + '/' + relativeURL +
'?' + parms );
HttpURLConnection urlc =
(HttpURLConnection)url.openConnection();
urlc.setAllowUserInteraction( false );
urlc.setDoInput( true );
urlc.setDoOutput( false );
urlc.setUseCaches( false );
urlc.setRequestMethod( "GET" );
urlc.connect();
InputStream is = urlc.getInputStream();

int statusCode;
statusCode = urlc.getResponseCode();
// get size of message. -1 means comes in an indeterminate
number of chunks.
int estimatedLength = (int)urlc.getContentLength();
if ( estimatedLength < 0 )
{
estimatedLength = 32*1024;
}

// R E A D
String result = readEverything( is, estimatedLength );
// C L O S E
is.close();
urlc.disconnect();

return result;
} // end get



/**
* Send a formful of data to the CGI host using GET.
*
* @param websiteURL URL of the website
* @param relativeURL
* relative URL of the document/CGI desired
* Absolute begin with /.
* @param parms parms to send, encoded with URLEncoder
* @return CGI host's response, raw, everything incuding headers
and embedded length fields
* @exception IOException
*/
public static String getRaw( String websiteURL, String relativeURL,
String parms ) throws IOException
{

URL url = new URL( "http://" + websiteURL );
int port = url.getPort();
if ( port == -1 ) port = 80;
Socket sock = new Socket( websiteURL, port );

// Obtain data streams
OutputStream os = sock.getOutputStream();
InputStream is = sock.getInputStream();


StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer( 1000 );
sb.append( "GET" );
sb.append( " " );
sb.append( relativeURL );

if ( parms.length() > 0 )
{
sb.append( "?");
sb.append( parms );
}

sb.append( " " );
sb.append( "HTTP/1.1\n" );
sb.append( "User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0;
Windows NT 5.0) Opera 7.11 [en]\n" );

sb.append( "Host: " );
sb.append( websiteURL );
sb.append( "\n" );

sb.append( "Accept: text/html, image/png, image/jpeg, image/gif,
image/x-xbitmap, */*;q=0.1\n" );
sb.append( "Accept-Language: en\n" );
sb.append( "Accept-Charset: windows-1252, utf-8, utf-16,
iso-8859-1;q=0.6, *;q=0.1\n" );
sb.append( "Accept-Encoding: deflate, gzip, x-gzip, identity,
*;q=0\n" );

// Referer: could go here.
// cookies could go here.

sb.append( "Connection: Keep-Alive, TE\n" );
sb.append( "TE: deflate, gzip, chunked, identity, trailers\n" );
sb.append( "Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\n"
);
sb.append( "\n" );

String header = sb.toString();

os.write( header.getBytes( "8859_1" /* encoding */ ) );
os.close();

// Read data FROM server till -1 eof
// get everything. headers, embedded length counts etc.
String result = readEverything ( is, 32*1024 );

is.close();
return result;
} // end getRaw

/**
* Used to read until EOF on an Inputstream that
* sometimes returns 0 bytes because data have
* not arrived yet. Does not close the stream.
*
* @param is InputStream to read from.
* @param estimatedLength
* Estimated number of bytes that will be read.
* -1 or 0 mean you have no idea. Best to make
* some sort of guess a little on the high side.
* @return String representing the contents of the entire
* stream.
*/
public static String readEverything( InputStream is, int
estimatedLength ) throws IOException
{
if ( estimatedLength <= 0 )
{
estimatedLength = 10*1024;
}

StringBuffer buf = new StringBuffer( estimatedLength );

int chunkSize = Math.min ( estimatedLength, 4*1024 );
byte[] ba = new byte[ chunkSize ];

// -1 means eof, 0 means none available for now.
int bytesRead;

while ( ( bytesRead = is.read( ba, 0, chunkSize )) >= 0 )
{
if ( bytesRead == 0 )
{
try
{
// no data for now
// wait a while before trying again to see if data has
arrived.
// avoid hogging cpu in a tight loop
Thread.sleep( 100 );
}
catch ( InterruptedException e )
{
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
}
}
else
{
// got some data
buf.append( new String( ba, 0, bytesRead , "8859_1" /*
encoding */) );
}
}
return buf.toString();
} // end readEverything

/**
* Reads exactly len bytes from the input stream
* into the byte array. This method reads repeatedly from the
* underlying stream until all the bytes are read.
* InputStream.read is often documented to block like this, but in
actuality it
* does not always do so, and returns early with just a few bytes.
* readBlocking blocks until all the bytes are read,
* the end of the stream is detected,
* or an exception is thrown. You will always get as many bytes as
you
* asked for unless you get an eof or other exception.
* Unlike readFully, you find out how many bytes you did get.
*
* @param b the buffer into which the data is read.
* @param off the start offset of the data in the array,
* not offset into the file!
* @param len the number of bytes to read.
* @return number of bytes actually read.
* @exception IOException if an I/O error occurs.
*
*/
public static final int readBlocking ( InputStream in , byte b[ ],
int off, int len ) throws IOException
{
int totalBytesRead = 0;
while ( totalBytesRead < len )
{
int bytesRead = in.read( b , off + totalBytesRead , len -
totalBytesRead );
if ( bytesRead < 0 )
{
break;
}
if ( bytesRead == 0 )
{
try
{
// no data for now
// wait a while before trying again to see if data has
arrived.
// avoid hogging cpu in a tight loop
Thread.sleep( 100 );
}
catch ( InterruptedException e )
{
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
}
}
else
{
totalBytesRead += bytesRead;
}
}
return totalBytesRead;
}
// end readBlocking

} // end class CGIget

package com.mindprod.voter;
import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;
import java.net.URLEncoder;

/**
* Like A StringBuffer but encodes CGI pairs.
*
* @author Roedy Green
* @version 1.0
* @since 2003-05-26
*/
public class CGIRequest
{
// ideally would extend StringBuffer, but it is final.

/**
* constructor
*
* @param size estimated size of result string.
*/
public CGIRequest ( int size )
{
this.sb = new StringBuffer (size);
}

private final StringBuffer sb;

/**
* append a parm=value pair of CGI parameters,
* ecoding them with URL encoding, xxx=yyy&aaa=bbb etc.
*
* @param name parameter name
*
* @param value parameter value
*/
public void appendCGIPair ( String name, String value )
{
if ( sb.length() != 0 )
{
// separates pairs
sb.append( '&' );
}
try
{
sb.append( URLEncoder.encode( name , "ASCII" ) );
sb.append ( '=' );
sb.append( URLEncoder.encode( value, "ASCII" ) );
}
catch ( UnsupportedEncodingException e )
{
throw new IllegalArgumentException("ASCII encoding support
missing");
}

}

/**
* get request as an a URL-encoded String.
*
* @return result CGI request string.
*/
public String toString()
{
return sb.toString();
}
}




--
Bush crime family lost/embezzled $3 trillion from Pentagon.
Complicit Bush-friendly media keeps mum. Rumsfeld confesses on video.
http://www.infowars.com/articles/us/...s_rumsfeld.htm

Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
See http://mindprod.com/iraq.html photos of Bush's war crimes