Connecting to Google with Java - Help

Bruce Fan

Hi, I 'm starting a project where I have to write a java program(s) where by I have to connect to Google, submit a query, modify the results and display results in a browser language (jsp, asp, html etc). The front end will also be a web page of some description.

Could some one point me in the right direction i.e. a good web site, example code or a even book...I haven't been able to find much useful info yet myself.

Thanks,
Bruce Fan.

aidan_walsh

Point you in the right direction, in what aspect?

Bruce Fan

As in a link to a web site with information on connecting to a search engine using java and returning results....or a link to sample code in that aspect.

scojones

http://www.cs.usfca.edu/~wolber/SoftwareDev/Distributed/WebServices/Google/googleJavaTutorial.htm

A simple search in google with the words "Google API in Java" returned that link.

Khannie

Bruce Fan; Do you mean by opening up a socket on port 80, issuing a get request, etc?

Sounds to me like you're looking for java socket programming examples. They should be all over the place. The basics of what you want to do are:

open a socket to google.ie on port 80,
write out a GET request (which includes the search)
receive back HTML into a string buffer of some description,
alter the retrieved info,
spit it back out as html.

Bruce Fan

Khannie; that's exactly what I want to do. I just can't find any working example to get me started. I'm fairly proficient with Java but I've never used sockets before.

seamus

There is a java.net.HttpURLConnection class which provides specific functionality for connecting to web servers.

By all means rewrite a class using Sockets if you want though

As a quick tip: In order to get data back from Google, you'll have to spoof some browser headers or Google will detect you as an attempt to connect programmatically and will disconnect you.

aidan_walsh

Find Java Network Programming by Elliott Rusty Harold in your library.

rsynnott

Google has a SOAP web search API; however, not many people used it, and they recently discontinued support and stopped issuing keys. However, if Yahoo would do, they have something similar. This would give the data back in a sensible defined format and so on.