I'm in the process of moving around many functions and methods that I've used and collected over the years doing web scrapes. I make no claims and take no responsibility for what YOU do with this module, but the following are some of the various uses that I have implemented the module for:
- Parsing raw web data
- Extracting and watermarking images from one site to a local copy
- Text, feed, and raw file parsing with support for mime detection
- Circumventing captchas, obfuscation, and session/cookie validation
With this module alone, you can create any number of usefull applications from search engines and web crawlers to spamming or automation tools (not that I recommend doing so, but if you so desire, the functionality is there).
This module is released under an MIT opensource license
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.