writing bots in Java

writing bots overview

The bot is a kind of program allows to browse internet programmatically. Browse meaning do all things that people do throught browser like IE or Firefox.

This subject described here and resource owner published several books about programming bots in Java. This is a great work worth to look close. We however don’t like it because in our opinion things is much more simpler. We like KISS principle.

And our approach to write bots is to use HtmlUnit library. It’s well known in Java world open source project widely used to test web applications.

Subjects will be covered are:

– how to create browser instance with HtmlUnit;

– how to open page with HtmlUnit;

– how to get page elements with HtmlUnit;

– how to get links from page with HtmlUnit;

– how to click on the link or button or any clickable element;

– how to hide itself using proxy;

– how to login to Twitter programmatically;

– how to auto follow programmatically;

– how to simulate human behavior making delays;

– how to query search engine with HtmlUnit;