Acme Spider

Acme Spider has only recently been identified and is not reviewed in detail in this draft. The licence terms appear to be free, but the licence type is not recognised, see below:

// Copyright (C) 1996 by Jef Poskanzer <[email protected]>.  All rights reserved.

//

// Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without

// modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions

// are met:

// 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright

//    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

// 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright

//    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the

//    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

//

// THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ''AS IS'' AND

// ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE

// IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE

// ARE DISCLAIMED.  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE

// FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL

// DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS

// OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)

// HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT

// LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY

// OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF

// SUCH DAMAGE.

Initial review notes

AcmeSpider is a relatively advanced basic spider that supports multi-threaded usage. The HTML elements that are of interest are reported through a number of callback methods from the HTMLObserver interface, similar to the Swing HTML Parser callbacks.

AcmeSpider also has supporting classes for handling the robot exclusion protocol and specialised URL connection types.