Hi all,
I am proposing to write a program that needs to know the URL of internet pages as the viewer visits them in their prefered web browser. I am writing it for academic cataloging purposes and the program is in no way malicious or has ANYTHING to do with Spyware, so please don't accuse me of this.
I was wondering if anybody could help me start my research about how I will go about doing this please? I have the idea of writing a web browser or writing a proxy server which shouldn't be too hard. However, I would just like the program to sit in the background and silently catalog the users browsing, just like your browser's history would do for you.
So I, essentially want to become the web browser's history externally. I suppose the thing that I want is "Packet sniffing" which I know cannot be done in pure Java. However, is there an alternative to this? I have programming experience in (Ordered from most confident, to least confident) Java, VB6, C++, Python, Javascript, LISP, VB.NET, Pascal, Assembler... and i am not fussy as to what language I use to do it in (However would vote against Assembler or LISP!!!!
) Infact, i'd like to make a few different implementations in different languages.
I have never dabbled with the network programming side of things, so I need a little help if anyone would be so kind please?
Is Java the best language for me to attempt this in? Are there any Java classes that will help me achieve this? Can anyone provide me with some keywords to search for to aid me? Are there any recommended external packages that can be recomended to do this? Are there any types of applications which work in a similar way (i.e. getting the URL visited) that would help me write my program?
I know that's alot of questions!
Thanks very much, Lisa
