Question

Specifically im wondering if in java (preferred) or perl is it possible to enter a url and have it copy text from that page? Specifically I want to be able to search something on google and just copy paste the first 5 links that come up. Not doing SEO or anything its just for a program im working on.

Answer 1

This can definitely be done in either language. Take a look at the following for java:

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/networking/urls/readingURL.html

From the documentation:

URL oracle = new URL("http://www.oracle.com/");
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(
    new InputStreamReader(
    oracle.openStream()));

String inputLine;

while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null)
  System.out.println(inputLine);

in.close();

This will give you the HTML on the page. You will need to parse that as needed to pull out the specific text you are interested in.