Crawling browser-accessible applications

摘要

Crawling a browser-accessible application by causing a target application and a bridge application to run concurrently in a browser-controllable player, and iteratively receiving from the bridge application current state information of the target application, storing the state information on a data storage device if the state information is not found on the data storage device, where the state information is stored as a descendant state of an initial state of the target application, and interacting with the target application in accordance with a predefined simulation algorithm, thereby effecting a new state of the target application, until a predefined termination condition is reached.

主权项

1. A computer-implemented method for crawling a browser-accessible target application comprising:
directing a browser to access the target application and execute the target application within a browser-controllable player; simulating interactions with the target application in accordance with a predefined simulation indicating a series of operations by controlling the target application to perform the operations specified in the predefined simulation via the browser-controllable player to transition the target application to a plurality of new states, wherein the simulating interactions occurs until the operations within the predefined simulation have been performed; storing information pertaining to each of the new states within a data storage device, wherein the storing information further includes:
storing a description of interactions performed with the target application that produced a corresponding state of the target application; and transitioning the target application to a parent state of a given state by interacting with the target application in an initial state in accordance with the stored interaction descriptions to provide a sequence of states from the initial state to the parent state.