How do you programmatically expand a url link to its true location?
How do you programmatically expand a url link to its true location?
(OP)
How do you programmatically expand a url link to its true location?
Do you know about tinyurl.com and baidu.com? Baidu.com is a search engine that tries to discourage people from using their web site to make metasearch engines by hiding their links in a way that is a lot like how tinyurl.com works. TinyUrl.com is a web site where, if you want to present someone with a link to something and that link is long, you can use tinyurl to produce a tiny url for presentation purposes.
Anyway, what I want to do is to find a way to programmatically take the link http://www.baidu.com/link?url=mW91GJqjJ4zBBpC8yDF8... (the first link in a search for Jessica Alba using baidu.com) and have it return the actual link, http://baike.baidu.com/view/270790.htm . That is just one example. What I want to do is not specific to Jessica but for using Baidu.com as part of my group of search engines in my meta search engine project.
Maybe there is a way of using the WebBrowser class but I did not see a member that was the URL.
Maybe there is a way of using WebRequest and WebResponse.
Do you know about tinyurl.com and baidu.com? Baidu.com is a search engine that tries to discourage people from using their web site to make metasearch engines by hiding their links in a way that is a lot like how tinyurl.com works. TinyUrl.com is a web site where, if you want to present someone with a link to something and that link is long, you can use tinyurl to produce a tiny url for presentation purposes.
Anyway, what I want to do is to find a way to programmatically take the link http://www.baidu.com/link?url=mW91GJqjJ4zBBpC8yDF8... (the first link in a search for Jessica Alba using baidu.com) and have it return the actual link, http://baike.baidu.com/view/270790.htm . That is just one example. What I want to do is not specific to Jessica but for using Baidu.com as part of my group of search engines in my meta search engine project.
Maybe there is a way of using the WebBrowser class but I did not see a member that was the URL.
Maybe there is a way of using WebRequest and WebResponse.
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RE: How do you programmatically expand a url link to its true location?
Rhys
"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal"
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe"
Albert Einstein
RE: How do you programmatically expand a url link to its true location?
A GET is sent to http://www.baidu.com/link?url=mW91GJqjJ4zBBpC8yDF8..., which is returned with a status of 302 (which means redirect to) and there's a header called "Location" that says where to redirect to.
CODE
The browser will then ask for http://baike.baidu.com/view/270790.htm as it has been told to.
You can use the WebRequest object pretend to be a browser, make the request and read the headers back from it. You don't need to follow the link, if you don't want to.
hth
Ben
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Ben O'Hara