CODEWITHSUNDEEP
visual-studio
vbNewbie
vbNewbie

Reputation: 3345

search APIs versus screen scraping

I would like to know as a newbie programmer what the benefits are of using for example google search API or newest buzz API for data content gathering instead of screen scraping; obviously apart from the legal aspects.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 251

Answers (2)

Chris Thornton
Chris Thornton

Reputation: 15817

One big downside of screen scraping is that the screen can change and break your scraper. So you end up having to continually adjust your code to match theirs, and since you don't know about changes ahead of time, you suffer downtime/outages as a result.
Also, you may be violating their TOS, and they won't like it. If you have paying customers for your service, you can find yourself between a rock and a hard place pretty quickly. Also, if you're simulating many users, you'll produce an unanticipated drag on the servers. So using a published/permitted API would be much more efficient for you, and for the web site serving up the source material.

Upvotes: 1

Gilbert Le Blanc
Gilbert Le Blanc

Reputation: 51567

API's are less likely to change than a screen layout.

Upvotes: 1

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