Method and Apparatus for an Application Crawler

• US 20130066848A1
• Filed: 09/14/2012
• Published: 03/14/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 11/22/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Inventors: Tuttle, Timothy D., Beguelin, Adam L., Kocks, Peter F.
• Granted Patent: US 9,405,833 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/711
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking

Abstract

A computer-implemented method is provided for searching for files on the Internet. In one embodiment, the method may provide an application crawler that assembles and dynamically instantiates all components of a web page. The instantiated web application may then be analyzed to locate desired components on the web page. This may involve finding and analyzing all clickable items in the application, driving the web application by injecting events, and extracting information from the application and writing it to a file or database.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

loading multiple documents or applications;

assembling the multiple documents or applications;

executing the loaded and assembled multiple documents or applications to instantiate the multiple documents or applications into a completely functioning application;

indexing an object model of the multiple running, instantiated documents or applications including identifying objects that are loaded once the documents or applications have been instantiated;

applying data-query interfaces to media player objects in the instantiated documents or applications; and

using the data-query interfaces to query the media player objects for media player properties and for metadata about any downloaded audio or video streams.

2-26. -26. (canceled)