Getting Started Spidering a Site

This is a very simple "getting started" example for spidering a web site. As you'll see in future examples, the Chilkat Spider library can be used to crawl the Web. For now, we'll concentrate on spidering a single site.

Download Chilkat Spider ActiveX

uses
    Windows, Messages, SysUtils, Variants, Classes, Graphics, Controls, Forms,
    Dialogs, StdCtrls,
    SPIDERXLib_TLB,
    SPIDERXLib_TLB,
    OleCtrls;

...

procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
var
spider: TSpider;
i: Integer;
success: Integer;

begin
//  The Chilkat Spider component/library is free.
spider := TSpider.Create(Self);

//  The spider object crawls a single web site at a time.  As you'll see
//  in later examples, you can collect outbound links and use them to
//  crawl the web.  For now, we'll simply spider 10 pages of chilkatsoft.com
spider.Initialize('www.chilkatsoft.com');

//  Add the 1st URL:
spider.AddUnspidered('http://www.chilkatsoft.com/');

//  Begin crawling the site by calling CrawlNext repeatedly.

for i := 0 to 9 do
  begin

    success := spider.CrawlNext();
    if (success = 1) then
      begin
        //  Show the URL of the page just spidered.
        Memo1.Lines.Add(spider.LastUrl);
        //  The HTML is available in the LastHtml property
      end
    else
      begin
        //  Did we get an error or are there no more URLs to crawl?
        if (spider.NumUnspidered = 0) then
          begin
            ShowMessage('No more URLs to spider');
          end
        else
          begin
            ShowMessage(spider.LastErrorText);
          end;
      end;
    //  Sleep 1 second before spidering the next URL.
    spider.SleepMs(1000);
  end;

end;