Web crawler

[Oscarian]

Does anyone have any tips/tutorials on how to write a web crawler using C?

On that note, is C a "good" language to use for a web crawler?

-O

 

[mark_bluemel]

Does anyone have any tips/tutorials on how to write a web crawler using C?

If you have to ask, you're probably not ready to do it.

On that note, is C a "good" language to use for a web crawler?

What do you mean by "good"? It wouldn't be my first choice. Other
languages probably provide more infrastructure for the job "out of the
box".

 

[Oscarian]

If you have to ask, you're probably not ready to do it.

Indeed, but I enjoy having goals, even if it is a long term goal.

What do you mean by "good"? It wouldn't be my first choice. Other
languages probably provide more infrastructure for the job "out of the
box".

"Good", as in "providing best efficiency". I guess.

-O

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Oscarian said:

Indeed, but I enjoy having goals, even if it is a long term goal.



"Good", as in "providing best efficiency". I guess.

Language isn't the efficiency bottleneck with Internet applications. The
Internet is!

Any language that can do the job is a good language. Sort them in order of
your preference. If you would rather write this in SNOBOL++, then write it
in SNOBOL++. If you'd rather write it in Perl, write it in Perl. If you'd
rather write it in C, write it in C. And if you'd rather write it in MS-DOS
batch script, you're a braver man than me!

Different languages exist because not everybody thinks the same way. You
have a choice. Use it. Don't let others dictate it.

 

[mark_bluemel]

Indeed, but I enjoy having goals, even if it is a long term goal.

Fine, but if you want to research writing a Web Crawler, asking on a C
language newsgroup is probably not the best starting point.
<Off-topic>

The principle is fairly simple:-
1. Make a list of URLs
2. Access the next URL from the list
3. Find any links in the URL, add them to your list, discarding
duplicates
4. Go to 2

What language would you find it easiest to do this in? As I've already
stated, I probably wouldn't choose C - as I work with Java regularly, I
might choose that (out of the box, it has useful classes for accessing
URLs, maintaining lists, etc), or I might use a scripting language such
as Python or even Perl. As Richard has pointed out, the choice of
language is unlikely to have a huge impact on performance.

There is a discussion of WebCrawlers on Wikipedia, with links to a
variety of implementations in a range of languages. Entering "writing a
webcrawler" into Google leads to an assortment of papers, tutorials
etc.
</Off-topic>

 

[Oscarian]

<Off Topic>

Thanks guys, I will do some playful stuff and once I have learned enough I
will plug away at doing something like a web crawler.

Different languages exist because not everybody thinks the same way. You
have a choice. Use it. Don't let others dictate it.

Richard, you sound like an old hacker trying to open the minds of us
inexperienced guys. Thanks for the encouragement.

There is a discussion of WebCrawlers on Wikipedia, with links to a
variety of implementations in a range of languages. Entering "writing a
webcrawler" into Google leads to an assortment of papers, tutorials
etc.

I know, I did a search and read the wiki page and also looked at the
google results. None of them mentioned C, which is why I posted to the
group. I'll dig through the tutorials in Java and see if I can come up
with some psuedocode to do the same thing in C.

Thanks though.

Cheers-
O