screen wiping or data wiping

hargi · 1 Jun 2010 at 10:47

Hi,

Think this is possible, just need a point in the right direction.
And to know if what i want to do is ok.

I play online Sport RPG, so i get a web page with stats for my team and also stats for my opponents, other then highlighting and selecting this data to paste into notepad then pasting into word. How easy and were should i be looking to create a app or program that would get me this data and put it into variables ect.

I know the copy paste thing is easier, but would like to do this as a bit of a project.
Would i be able to do this in Java or what would be the best language?

TIA

GravyMonster · 1 Jun 2010 at 11:14

The term for what you're trying to achieve is 'Screen scraping'.

It's certainly possible in Java, although ATM all I could find was a PHP tutorial, but the idea is exactly the same - here.

Pho · 1 Jun 2010 at 11:18

Are you sure the website doesn't offer the stats in an XML format say? Would be much easier.

hargi · 1 Jun 2010 at 11:29

dumb question but how would i find out about the xml?

rickh · 1 Jun 2010 at 14:44

Usually an RSS logo or xml logo somewhere on the page.
Some browsers can xml feeds automatically.

Post the URL of the page in question.

I would be happy to help you write some regex rules to scrape the data from the page if you require.

RobH · 1 Jun 2010 at 15:25

You may also be able to use XPATH queries to access the data.

hargi · 1 Jun 2010 at 18:11

Thanks for your help. rickh may i email you, just dont wanna post the url for if its breaking copyright

hargi · 2 Jun 2010 at 17:53

I looked it doesnt seem to be XML.
I can get JAVA to download the page code i just need to get the proper regex now.