Screen snarfs
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The Web is a wonderful place. All those treasures of information 
like ripe apples hanging just inches away from your grasp. You just 
need a browser. Or, do you? <br>
<br>
How hard is it to grab a particular nugget of data off a Web page 
without going to the trouble of launching a browser, typing in the 
URL, clicking down a layer or two, etc.? Surprisingly, it's really
quite simple. <br>
<br>
An example: Network Solutions maintains a <i>whois server</i> for 
querying the InterNIC database of domain names and owners. 
(<a href="http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois">
http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois</a>.) 
It's a great tool. In fact, it's a better tool than many people 
know. Let's see if we can streamline the way it works, and deliver 
an informative and useful report.<br>
<br>
First of all, using the InterNIC whois to see if www.coolbabes.com is 
taken (it is) is a very trivial implementation of a powerful tool. Why 
not use it to see <i>all the domains registered to General Motors?</i> 
When you get the list (large), each domain is hyper-linked, so you can 
click on them to get each one's entire database entry.<br>
<br>
<i>Or</i> you can write a screen snarf that asks for a list of all 
GM's registered domain names and then uses the list to collect all 
GM's InterNIC database records. <br>
<br>
You could kick such a scraper off through a CGI run by a Web 
form. Or, you could run it as a daily cron. You might even implement 
it as a Java application your secretary runs on his Windows desktop. 
I'll <a href="snarfs.php3?1">show you how</a> to do all three.  
I'll even show you how to do it from behind a proxy firewall.
<br>