Programmatic Access To Dmoz

Years ago I downloaded a java program that could programmatically access dmoz. Is this programmatic interface still available? Has anyone heard of this program (I can't find it anymore).

thanks.

Hello, couldn't find anything in Java, but there is a selection of software which might be what you are looking for here

thanks.

Hmm. none of them are really what I am looking for.

I want to access the dmoz database through some sort of programmatic api (it does not matter what language it is in). I seem to remember that this was possible. Maybe I am mistaken.

It wasn't called Tulip Chain was it?

We don't offer a direct API access, so any tools will need to use one of two possible ways to access ODP data:

1) Screen scraping (Which is disencouraged for any project getting considerable amounts of traffic). There are a few solutions out there, mostly in PHP, offering such systems. I don't know of any API like solution though. If you find any (and it is not listed in the abovementioned category), feel free to suggest a link there, so that others might benefit from your knowledge.

FTR: Because of the high amount of traffic this generates on our public servers, AOL Staff from time to time bans a few of those sites that generate to much traffic this way.

2) Download and process the RDF files. This is of course a lot more initial work, and does not give you live data, but it removes the permanent load from our servers. I have read (in this forum) that there are a few solutions for this approach, but AFAIK nobody offered a complete ready-to-use system yet.

yup tulip chain looks like it is the one. thanks a mil.

which leads to the question of how they do it.

do they download the data, and set up there own server? hmm.

just by looking at the api, I think it might be a very sophisticated scrapper. I am deducing that because it seems to have some generating lexers, doesnt anyone else know?

Yes, TulipChain is a scraper.

thanks