Book Image

MooTools 1.3 Cookbook

By : Jay L Johnston
Book Image

MooTools 1.3 Cookbook

By: Jay L Johnston

Overview of this book

MooTools is a JavaScript framework that abstracts the JavaScript language. JavaScript itself, complex in syntax, provides the tools to write a layer of content interaction for each different browser. MooTools abstracts those individual, browser-specific layers to allow cross-browser scripting in an easy-to-read and easy-to-remember syntax. Animation and interaction, once the domain of Flash, are being taken by storm by the MooTools JavaScript framework, which can cause size, shape, color, and opacity to transition smoothly. Discover how to use AJAX to bring data to today's web page users who demand interactivity without clunky page refreshes. When searching for animation and interactivity solutions that work, MooTools 1.3 Cookbook has individual, reusable code examples that get you running fast! MooTools 1.3 Cookbook readies programmers to animate, perform AJAX, and attach event listeners in a simple format where each section provides a clear and cross-browser compatible sketch of how to solve a problem, whether reading from beginning to finish or browsing directly to a particular recipe solution. MooTools 1.3 Cookbook provides instant solutions to MooTools problems – whatever you want to do with MooTools, this book will tell you how to do it. MooTools 1.3 Cookbook is presented in a progressive order that builds concepts and ideas, while simultaneously being a collection of powerful individual, standalone, recipe solutions.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
MooTools 1.3 Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Screen scraping a portion of another web page


Grabbing data from another web page can either be illegal or a last ditch effort to overcome a data issue. The industry pet name for grabbing another web page and parsing out the needed data is called "Screen Scraping".

Note

Remember, screen scraping a website that we do not have permission to use the data from is illegal and can land us and our firm in a lot of unnecessary hot water!

Getting ready

All the legal mumbo-jumbo aside, screen scraping has many legal, and purposeful uses. To implement this recipe, imagine a scenario whereby the menu of one internal, company-owned website needs to be displayed within an area of another, separately maintained, company-owned website. Using a web service or other XML feed is one way to handle that; but experienced programmers know, we can typically scrape that data and redisplay it before the initial XML specifications can even be documented.

Screen Scraping 101

  • Scrape only pages that we are licensed to scrape...