BlogShares Corporation Analyser

Published Tue, Jul 17 2007 10:30 AM

The "BlogShares Corporation Analyser" (CorporateCharter.exe) is a screen scraping application designed to retrieve several pages from the BlogShares website and extract data from them. This program pulls a large number of pages and uses a built-in delay of two seconds between every page load. This is intended to ensure that the program does not place a heavy load on the BlogShares servers.

Any program that only reads information from the site is legal so long as it does not cause excessive strain on the server by making repeated requests within a short amount of time. Use of such programs is allowed with the understanding that the operator agrees to cease or modify use of the program if requested. If use of the program does not cease, appropriate action will be taken by the administration or BSEC.

Before releasing this program I spoke with SubWolf about it to determine guidelines for using it. This is why the program loads only one page ever two seconds. SubWolf also recommends only using the program once every few hours. Please do not abuse this program.

This application is provided "AS-IS". There are no warranties whatsoever, implied or otherwise regarding the usage of this program.

System Requirements

The "Blogshares Corporation Analyser" is a Windows Forms program written for the .NET Framework version 2.0. This program requires several Microsoft packages to run.

  • .NET Framework Version 1.1 Redistributable Package.

    While the application was written for the .NET Framework Version 2.0, there are some components used that require the earlier version of the Framework. The "One-Click" deployment technology requires .NET 1.1, as does the HTML Parser.

  • Download details: .NET Framework Version 2.0 Redistributable Package

    The application was written for the .NET Framework Version 2.0. It uses some features, including a "WebBrowser" control and several classes from the framework that are not available in earlier versions. The "One-Click" deployment technology will install this package if it is not present on your computer (at least, that's what the documentation says).

  • Internet Explorer version 5.5 or higher.

    The application uses Internet Explorer to retrieve pages from the BlogShares site and to provide access to the HTML Document Object Model. Internet Explorer is available here.

  • Microsoft.mshtml.dll

    Microsoft.mshtm.dll is the primary interop assembly for the mshtml component of Internet Explorer. This assembly provides access to the underlying COM interfaces in the IE Document Object model.

    If you have the other pre-requisites for running this application on your machine, you should already have this installed. In case you don't I have a copy of the dll here. This assembly needs to be placed in the global assembly cache on your machine.

    If the .NET framework is installed correctly, you should be able to do this.

    • Open a command prompt window.
      1. From the Start menu, click "Run".
      2. The executable name should be "cmd".
    • In the command prompt window type the command
      start %windir%\assembly

      This should open a folder window for the global assembly cache.

    • Drag Microsoft.mshtml.dll from wherever you downloaded it to into the global assembly cache window and drop it.

    That should be all you need.

Installation

The installation package for this program can be found here. Click on Install and the program should check for system requirements and install.

A shortcut to the program will be added to your personal "start" menu. Each time you launch the program it will check system requirements, check for upgrades, and launch the program. You must be online to run the program.

Latest Updates

The most recent change to the program is the addition of a "top 20" list of blogs for each corporation member. Once you have loaded the details for a corporation, clicking on the member name will begin the process of analysing that member's portfolio.

This feature works by going to the user's portfolio page, retrieving a list of folders and then going to each folder's first page, sorted in descending order on the total share value held, and set to retrieve 100 blogs per page. All of the blogs collected in this way are then sorted in descending order based on approximate blog valuation ((total shares * price) / pe) and the top 20 blogs are retained and presented.

The newest feature will open the individual blog's details page in a new browser window when you click on the blog name.