http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=336560


in reply to Cutting Out Previously Visited Web Pages in A Web Spider

Here's my pretty simple try (without using files and just for a single page). Adjust to taste:

#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use LWP::RobotUA; use HTML::SimpleLinkExtor; sub grab_links { my ( $ua, $url ) = @_; my @links; my $response = $ua->get($url); if ($response->is_success) { my $extor = HTML::SimpleLinkExtor->new(); my $content = $response->content; $extor->parse($content); @links = $extor->a; # get a ref links. Check docs - these are re +lative paths. } else { die $response->status_line; } return @links; } my $visit = $ARGV[0]; my $ua = LWP::RobotUA->new('my-robot/0.1', 'me@foo.com'); # Change th +is to suit. $ua->delay( 0.1 ); # hit every 1/10 second my @links = grab_links($ua, $visit); my %uniq; foreach ( @links ) { $uniq{$_}++; } print "Visited: ", $visit, " found these links:\n", join( "\n", keys % +uniq), "\n";

Update: this code was put here after talking to mkurtis in the CB. It appears to do most of the things mkurtis is after, so I posted it for future reference.
Most of the code was taken straight from the docs for HTML::SimpleLinkExtor, LWP::RobotUA and LWP::UserAgent.

This is the first time I've used any of those modules and it was quite cool :-)


If the information in this post is inaccurate, or just plain wrong, don't just downvote - please post explaining what's wrong.
That way everyone learns.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Cutting Out Previously Visited Web Pages in A Web Spider
by mkurtis (Scribe) on Mar 15, 2004 at 03:58 UTC
    Thanks kappa and BazB, Would you by any chance know how to use URI::URL to make all links absolute. I believe the syntax in this case would be

    url("links from extor")->abs("$url");
    But I don't see how to put this in the do loop.

    Because CPAN isn't searching, heres the URI link: URI::URL

    thanks a bunch

      There's no need to use URI::URL. Change the HTML::SimpleLinkExtor code to return absolute instead of relative paths.

      There is a comment in my code in my last reply noting that my code currently returns relative paths and pointing you to the module docs. RTFM :-)


      If the information in this post is inaccurate, or just plain wrong, don't just downvote - please post explaining what's wrong.
      That way everyone learns.

        I have been trying to build in your error checking, as well as tie it into a DBM for when it crashes. Heres what I got:
        #!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; use warnings; use LWP::RobotUA; use HTML::SimpleLinkExtor; use vars qw/$http_ua $link_extractor/; sub crawl { my @queue = @_; my %visited; my $a = 42464; my $base; dbmopen(%visited, "visited", 0666); while ( my $url = shift @queue ) { next if $visited{$url}; my $response = $http_ua->get($url); if ($response->is_success) { my $content = $response->content open FILE, '>' . ++$a . '.txt'; print FILE "$url\n"; print FILE $content; close FILE; print qq{Downloaded: "$url"\n}; push @queue, do { my $link_extractor = HTML::SimpleLinkExtor->new($u +rl); $link_extractor->parse($content); $link_extractor->a; }; $visited{$url} = 1; } else { dbmclose(%visited); die $response->status_line; } } } $http_ua = new LWP::RobotUA theusefulbot => 'bot@theusefulnet.com'; $http_ua->delay( 10 / 6000 ); crawl(@ARGV);
        This gives me: Can't call method "is_success" without a package or object reference at theusefulbot.pl line 21.

        Any Ideas?

        Thank you