Curse

Cymboric Treewalker · Apr 29, 2005, 06:03 PM // 18:03

I was wondering if anyone knows of a way or wants to work on a project to query the GW servers for guild web pages. I would like to pull current rankings, and who's online myself... there are probably other things that could be done.

Thanks.

dested · May 01, 2005, 12:32 AM // 00:32

I gotta assume theres no way. For you to do taht u would need tehre sql information, to which they wont give out for security reasons.

Fam · May 01, 2005, 01:20 AM // 01:20

It would be quite nice if the provided a web services or such to tell you, for any user account, if they were online, and which character they were using. That could be done securely by AN, although there would be an extra cost for both developing and hosting this.

Dtach · May 02, 2005, 05:57 PM // 17:57

Cant php Parse Info from a html doc?
This way it would just load the ladder, find the guilds name and post something that is before it.. *example: (if their html would be like this) <div "rank">263</div><div class"guild">Guild Name</div>
I dont know alot about php, but iv seen script do this..

Sarus · May 02, 2005, 06:08 PM // 18:08

Basically all you would need is a bot written in any language that downloads the webpage in question and parses out the data into a database. You would set a cron job to run the bot every 5 minutes or whatever. Then you'd have your own webpage display information from the database.

It's actually relatively trivial to do. The biggest concern is whether or not Anet wants a bunch of bots trolling their pages. Most people don't like it but Anet probably won't mind since you wouldn't be causing any undue server stress.

If someone wants to undertake the project and needs help with it just PM me. I can do it myself next week once I finish up my last week of classes or help someone out if they want to do it as a learning experience.

Inde · May 02, 2005, 07:25 PM // 19:25

Actually that gives me an interesting idea - I will talk to kzap about it.

Kirbnet · May 04, 2005, 08:26 PM // 20:26

Hi - I've got a working php class up at:
http://kirb.net/gw.php

You can just put in your guild tag and it will fetch the arena net ladder page, parse it up, and let you play with the results. Works in PHP 4. I would like to hear any feedback. This would be the first code I'm going to release, so hopefully it won't be too clumsy to use.

Thanks.

Inde · May 04, 2005, 08:32 PM // 20:32

I will have something very nifty for Guild Wars Guru soon - hopefully before May 15.

Aladdar · May 04, 2005, 09:05 PM // 21:05

I wish that arena.net would take a page from what Mythic did with DAoC where they had tons of info available in XML such as guild info and rankings, skills, spells, etc... So you could just pull all that info from xml tables to build your websites.

kzap · May 06, 2005, 07:39 AM // 07:39

---- 10 letters

Inde · May 11, 2005, 03:13 PM // 15:13

Well our 1.0 version is up: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/ladder/

Version 1.5 comes in a bit

Ramus · May 11, 2005, 03:24 PM // 15:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inde

Well our 1.0 version is up: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/ladder/

Version 1.5 comes in a bit

Very cool! Hopefully there is a search function in 1.5.

Inde · May 11, 2005, 03:36 PM // 15:36

Well, as it is just one page, I dont see why a search function would be needed

1.5 will introduce elements where search can be friendly

Ku Zo · May 13, 2005, 03:36 PM // 15:36

I take it that the ladder script is parsing the guild wars web pages, and not using some fansite feed xml from Anet?

Inde · May 13, 2005, 05:28 PM // 17:28

Ku Zo: Correct.

Lord Alden · May 14, 2005, 05:29 AM // 05:29

it would be nice if you could use something like XML, which you can include in your webpages that you could dynamically use with PHP. I have done it a couple times and would take my guild roster off its current SQL system if I could use a xml listing of guild members from the Guild Wars list. that would be cool

Inde · May 14, 2005, 01:23 PM // 13:23

As we are currently scraping the main site, its an active decision for us to not provide XML feeds etc.