Assignment 1

THE GOOGLE SOAP INTERFACE

Do
  1. Get a google soap API access key (if you are working in a group every person should obtain one of these for themselves). It is available on the google site, but it is hidden. You may ask me where it is hidden, but it will be a 1% deduction.
  2. Figure out how to use it (Do a search query, then give me results)
  3. When you do a query the sample code takes 3 arguements: <access key > query <query string >. Using these arguements, the code always returns the first 10 results on the query. Modify the sample code so that it takes 2 arguements: <query string> <starting point>. So, you will need to build your acccess key into the code and then figure out how to do a query that gets something other than the first 10 results (e.g., results 23-32).
  4. . Package everything you do up into an "executable" jar. With an executable jar you can execute a command like:
    java -jar myjar.jar towell 100
    In the above command the would return results 100-109 for the query towell. You might find the shell script exjar.sh (on the class web site) useful for creating executable jar files
Extra Credit:
  1. within the first 20 search results for "towell" are three pages about either me or one of my relatives. Which pages are they? (1 point for each correctly identified page, only 3 guesses allowed)
  2. extend the google demo to exercise some other facet of the Google SOAP API. Document the use of this extension. Write a description of what you extension does and why it is interesting. Hand in: an executable jar file for this extension and the required text. (Up to 20 points)
Submit electronically by start of class Sept 12:
  1. (attachment) a file containing the results of the query in step 2 of the "do" section (30 points)
  2. (attachment) the jar for step 4. This jar must include all class and java files. (40 points)
  3. (attachment) A brief report less than 1 page describing the steps in this assignment that took you longest and why. (10 points)
  4. (attachment) A brief report -- again less than 1 page -- on the topic "what the heck is SOAP and wsdl". A good starting point for this is the expansion of both acronyms. (15 points)
  5. (body) A list of the people you worked with on this assignment. (15 points)