+Kirok Posted October 23, 2005 Share Posted October 23, 2005 (edited) I'd like to write some simple Perl and / or PHP scripts to query the GC database, so that I can show my latest finds on my website. I could not find any posts regarding this, but I do see other sites using custom code to do similar things. Can someone point me in the right direction? TIA Edited October 23, 2005 by IAmKirok Link to comment
+ghazkull Posted October 23, 2005 Share Posted October 23, 2005 (edited) Sorry to disappoint you, but GC.com does not have an interface to query the DB. Since they also outlaw spiders there's no way to get to your data. Edit : well, you could probably use pocket queries. I'd really like to see a simple XML interface like on some other cache listing sites. Edited October 23, 2005 by ghazkull Link to comment
+Kirok Posted October 23, 2005 Author Share Posted October 23, 2005 (edited) Interesting. I know of a site that, aside from searching for co-ordinates, it shows me the ones I have found, in a different colour on the map. Clearly this is do-able. Edited October 23, 2005 by IAmKirok Link to comment
+sbell111 Posted October 23, 2005 Share Posted October 23, 2005 Something tells me that they won't be able to do it for very much longer. Link to comment
+Kirok Posted October 23, 2005 Author Share Posted October 23, 2005 A kind soul has e-mailed me the solution. It's not what I was expecting, but it's a start. Can we say, page scrapping boys and girls? Groan. Link to comment
+Lil Devil Posted October 23, 2005 Share Posted October 23, 2005 Can we say, page scrapping boys and girls? Groan. I'll try... Violating the TOU and getting one's IP permanately blocked. Close enough for you Link to comment
+Kirok Posted October 23, 2005 Author Share Posted October 23, 2005 Hmm. Again, interesting. I assume you are refering to section 5, titled "Access and Interference". It does imply that "scrapes" are not permitted, unless express written premission has been provided. For all I know, it has (to the site I had refered to previously - link now deleted.). I guess if I want to do it, I'll hvae to contact GC.com myself. Thanks. Link to comment
+Allen_L Posted October 23, 2005 Share Posted October 23, 2005 While the TOU indicates permission could be given in this message Elias says On scraping or mining the site for data: The official answer: Even though the TOU says to contact us for permission, we don't give permission to scrape the site. Its not supported, and we don't want anyone doing it. . Now he does admit that it goes on, but will be blocked if detected. Link to comment
+Prime Suspect Posted October 23, 2005 Share Posted October 23, 2005 It does imply that "scrapes" are not permitted, unless express written premission has been provided. You agree that you will not use any robot, spider, scraper or other automated means to access the Site for any purpose without our express written permission. I think that's beyond "imply". Link to comment
+Kirok Posted October 24, 2005 Author Share Posted October 24, 2005 Bad choice of wording, but yes, I understand it is forbidden. Suffice it to say I won't be attempting it, and as AllenLacy points out, I won't even bother asking. They've made the Stat Bar accessible to everyone, so I'll post the question to them in the form of a new feature request. What I'm simply looking for is a way to display names & links to the last 2 or 3 caches I've found at my website. Sort-of of a "what have I been up to lately" kind of thing. Can't hurt to ask. Thanks for the responses. Link to comment
+IV_Warrior Posted October 24, 2005 Share Posted October 24, 2005 I *think* that as long as you're linking back to the caches, and you page doesn't have any offensive content that you're fine. If all you want is your most recent 2 or 3, probably the easiest way to do this is manual. Just change the link(s) on your page after you've posted your find(s) for the day. After setting up the page the first time, it'd be a simple matter of deleting the old link(s) and doing a copy/paste for the new. Link to comment
+fizzymagic Posted October 24, 2005 Share Posted October 24, 2005 What I'm simply looking for is a way to display names & links to the last 2 or 3 caches I've found at my website. Sort-of of a "what have I been up to lately" kind of thing. Can't hurt to ask. That's easy to do. Keep your own local database of the waypoint numbers of the caches you have found, in the order you found them. You can populate that database from pocket queries quite easily using Perl, requiring no scraping at all. Then you can query the database for the most recently found caches and use the waypoint-name URL formulation to make a link from your local page to the cache page directly. No need to get to the site to figure out the cache's GUID. The waypoint-based URL just looks like this: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?wp=GCxxxx That's all you need. Link to comment
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