How to make an app that pulls in information from websites

[Jas00555]

Most of my apps up to this point have been fairly simple and static. Nothing too impressive and they're mostly for a couple of businesses around my town (building the Windows Phone brand in my town one app at a time) and they stay as-is unless they're updated, but based on who they're for, they don't change unless it's stuff like bug fixes, but I digress. I wanted to move to more complicated apps and I have a good idea for one. Now I'm not going to say exactly what it is, but I'll just give you guys and example: let's just say hypothetically that I wanted to make a Crackberry app (no, this is not it. It has nothing to do with Mobile Nations), how would I go about pulling in the information from Crackberry every time they post something so it would refresh like Jay does for the WP Central app? I think they're called dynamic apps, but I'm not 100% sure. I hope this is made sense.

 

[crash1989]

Hi,
There are a lot of ways to capture a website's data.

First you need to have permission from the website's management, this is done mostly with something called an API key.
Some websites put out APIs for use of their website which can be output in any form like XML, JSON. You can build your apps using those services, I built my apps the same way.I think you should visit https://dev.twitter.com/ to get thoroughly confused about APIs .. JK .. you will have a good idea of what I am talking about

The other way is to use Data Extraction/Web Scraping/Web Mining/Enterprise Data Mash-Ups or something similar to capture data on a server and put it out in readable form. This Browser Scripting, Data Extraction and Web Testing by iMacros might give you an idea.

Another option is to write out an app based on the RSS, ATOM feeds put out by the site. I think RSS is dying out slowly but it is a viable option.

I don't know any more techniques unless you have the access to the database of the website itself.

You need permission from the owners to do anything just remember that.

 

[Jas00555]

Alright, I've checked everything out and I think I've got a good plan now. The website has an API key that you can sign up to get so that shouldn't be a problem. Once I get a decent app, I'll be back for anyone who wants to beta test. Thanks for the help!