Novel Spider Project

Overview

This project showcases a web spider capable of capturing all free novels from a specific platform. Developed with privacy and ethical considerations at the forefront, the spider respects intellectual property rights by focusing solely on publicly accessible content.

Features

• First Chapter Link Input: Users can initiate the spider by providing a URL to the novel's first chapter, allowing for a targeted approach to content retrieval.
• Chapter Count Specification: Accommodates novels of varying lengths by requiring the user to specify the total number of chapters, ensuring complete capture from start to finish.
• Automated Navigation: Employs automated page turns simulating the 'right arrow' key press, seamlessly moving through chapters without manual intervention, and importantly, it supports the author and website by registering page views that may contribute to their revenue.
• Adjustable Delay: Incorporates a thoughtful delay between page accesses to mimic human interaction patterns, thus minimizing the risk of being flagged as automated traffic.

Technologies Used

• Selenium WebDriver: Powers the core web navigation, interaction, and content extraction functionalities.
• BeautifulSoup: Utilized for parsing HTML content and extracting relevant text, demonstrating proficiency in web scraping and data processing.
• Python: The project is built using Python, showcasing skills in scripting, automation, and backend development.

Ethical Consideration

This project is designed with a strong emphasis on respecting intellectual property rights and is intended for educational purposes or accessing content that is freely available.

Installation & Setup

Dependencies:

• Python 3.x
• Selenium WebDriver
• BeautifulSoup4

Installation Steps:

1. Python Installation: Ensure Python 3.x is installed on your system.
2. Install Selenium:

   pip install selenium
   

3. Install BeautifulSoup:

   pip install beautifulsoup4
   

How to Run the Spider

1. Open the project in your Python environment.
2. Modify the main function in the script to include the correct URL to the first chapter of the novel and the total number of chapters.

   if __name__ == "__main__":
       novel_first_chapter_url = "http://example.com/first_chapter"
       total_chapters = 100  # Replace with the actual number
       main(novel_first_chapter_url, total_chapters)

3. Run the script:

   python novel_spider.py
   

Note: Adjust the sleep time in the script if necessary to comply with the website's rate-limiting policies and to minimize the risk of being flagged as automated traffic.