I was trying to write an android app to help people do easier searches on multiple websites like craiglist, ebay ..etc
I am not sure where really to start from, or the name of the technology I would be using. To make it more accurate question, these websites are all forms based that you either post stuffs or retreive stuffs through searching. How can I make my android app actually in which it will ask the user for a item name (that part I know) and then send item name to say craiglist so it gets the results back?
I was thinking of copying the url that is displayed on my broswer when I click search on any of the website and using the same link with string manipulation to include whats needed.
Is this correct? Any other ideas are I know? I am kinda all over the place, but I need a starting point.
Some sites might expose a public API for you to connect with, but that’s site specific.
Sites that do not expose such a system can be “scraped”, which means you’re using string manipulation (as you mentioned) to parse our the data you’re after.
Both ways require basic knowledge on how to perform HTTP operations, there are several ways to do this but the easiest way it to use the HttpURLConnection class as described in various tutorials on the web.
Googling for “android http GET POST tutorial” should point you in the right way to get started with your adventure 🙂