This may not be the proper place to post this.
I want to develop a script that monitors the status section on a user's profile and notifies me when the subject takes off and estimates the time of travel.
It would not need an API key since the information is readily available on a user's profile page to anyone, you don't even need to be logged in.
I can't imagine it would be illegal, but wanted to ask prior to developing it further.
Thank you!
It would need to use the API. You aren't allowed to scrape pages you are not currently viewing.
exactly what stewie says
scraping the page automatically would be against the rules
it can easily be done through api though which is fine
Well what if it only functions while on the user's profile? So you just keep the tab open?
nope, thats still autoscraping
youd have to manually update it
ie, hit a refresh or a check button, or refresh the page etc
its easy enough to do with the api though
I thought pages auto update now though? Like that is actually built into Torn?
Yes, but the information in your script is being updated automatically, not manually by you. It's still scraping because you're using the front-end, instead of the back-end (that sounded really dirty).
I don't know why you're against using the API, they already told you it would be fine if you used the API to do what you're trying to do.
Thank you all for the info. I have no problem using the API, just thought simply monitoring the profile would be easier. Think I'll use the API.
Great info!
I'm not OP, nor am I trying to dispute that the API is the most efficient way of doing things. I am merely discussing concepts, I'm not trying to tick anyone off, which I may have inadvertently done here?
That's my bad, for some reason (I just woke up a couple of hours ago) I thought you were OP :P
But yeah, doing it the way you described, with a tab open, would be considered just past the hairline of being an illegal script.
I think the motivation for making scraping 'illegal' is so that people general have less tabs open and are taking up less bandwidth from the servers. I would assume this is also one of the main reasons the API was implemented.