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Java - getting data from a website

I am making an application that retrieves lottery numbers and displays them in a window. However, I don't know how to recover data and numbers from the website:

https://www.national-lottery.co.uk/player/p/results.ftl

How would you do it? I've done this before, but with a site that was returning a data string that I could use. I'm not sure how to do this anymore. Any suggestions would be appreciated and the technique (if any) will help me on much more of my projects!

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4 answers


The site contains a link to download the CSV version of the numbers. Just use this:

https://www.national-lottery.co.uk/player/lotto/results/downloadResultsCSV.ftl



Looks like:

DrawDate, Ball 1, Ball 2, Ball 3, Ball 4, Ball 5, Ball 6, Bonus Ball, Ball Set, Machine
07-Apr-2012,23,12,42,16,25,31,18,6, LANCELOT
04-Apr-2012,44,23,9,40,33,26,31,2, MERLIN
31-Mar-2012,2,49,40,47,18,5,19,1, MERLIN
28-Mar-2012,16,8,39,22,3,38,26,3, MERLIN
24-Mar-2012,24,27,6,39,31,45,32,4, LANCELOT
21-Mar-2012,10,14,45,25,39,21,40,1, MERLIN
17-Mar-2012,37,40,1,3,20,16,15,2, MERLIN
14-Mar-2012,15,36,26,31,14,18,48,4, MERLIN
10-Mar-2012,12,37,23,43,3,1,33,1, MERLIN
07-Mar-2012,28,44,8,35,11,2,17,3, MERLIN
03-Mar-2012,31,20,40,28,7,23,42,4, MERLIN
29-Feb-2012,41,29,46,14,49,13,43,3, LANCELOT
25-Feb-2012,29,27,26,7,32,25,33,1, LANCELOT
22-Feb-2012,35,12,7,49,43,15,8,4, MERLIN
18-Feb-2012,19,22,30,33,41,2,24,4, LANCELOT
15-Feb-2012,30,40,28,33,9,44,16,3, MERLIN
11-Feb-2012,24,31,23,1,49,45,6,3, LANCELOT
08-Feb-2012,7,13,31,44,36,16,26,8, LANCELOT
04-Feb-2012,41,45,7,40,48,4,46,2, MERLIN
01-Feb-2012,7,39,38,17,22,21,3,2, LANCELOT
28-Jan-2012,10,25,31,40,28,12,1,2, LANCELOT
25-Jan-2012,2,30,8,26,45,39,46,1, MERLIN
21-Jan-2012,17,5,32,39,49,42,19,5, MERLIN
18-Jan-2012,22,43,34,9,31,35,20,6, MERLIN
14-Jan-2012,7,12,10,15,25,42,33,7, LANCELOT
11-Jan-2012,40,33,39,9,2,27,45,6, LANCELOT
07-Jan-2012,47,8,15,17,14,20,38,7, MERLIN
04-Jan-2012,42,43,30,9,28,26,2,8, MERLIN
31-Dec-2011,11,38,42,37,44,7,2,7, LANCELOT
28-Dec-2011,48,11,49,13,17,8,19,6, LANCELOT
24-Dec-2011,43,32,36,15,23,1,19,7, LANCELOT
21-Dec-2011,30,7,28,34,38,45,6,5, MERLIN
17-Dec-2011,42,1,35,48,39,22,12,5, MERLIN
14-Dec-2011,3,43,30,28,10,25,31,8, MERLIN
10-Dec-2011,30,21,29,39,24,16,20,6, LANCELOT
07-Dec-2011,10,31,27,47,32,14,41,5, MERLIN
03-Dec-2011,49,1,35,48,47,30,8,8, MERLIN
30-Nov-2011,30,26,25,24,23,13,4,7, MERLIN
26-Nov-2011,13,36,26,16,25,46,15,6, MERLIN
23-Nov-2011,19,31,48,22,4,11,6,5, MERLIN
19-Nov-2011,32,31,1,34,29,36,45,3, ARTHUR
16-Nov-2011,26,40,39,27,10,12,20,1, GUINEVERE
12-Nov-2011,28,13,12,33,6,38,10,14, ARTHUR
09-Nov-2011,27,2,8,32,23,10,44,1, GUINEVERE
05-Nov-2011,14,24,39,23,16,27,43,8, LANCELOT
02-Nov-2011,12,38,11,33,37,49,3,2, GUINEVERE
29-Oct-2011,49,14,5,28,9,46,45,1, GUINEVERE
26-Oct-2011,4,23,34,41,38,39,27,4, GUINEVERE
22-Oct-2011,20,43,27,44,28,34,1,4, ARTHUR
19-Oct-2011,13,18,34,49,32,14,20,3, GUINEVERE
15-Oct-2011,41,7,12,46,34,27,14,2, ARTHUR
12-Oct-2011,37,26,40,25,13,24,30,3, ARTHUR
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Use Jsoup to fetch and parse the page:



String url = "https://www.national-lottery.co.uk/player/p/results.ftl";
Document document = Jsoup.connect(url).get();
final Elements elementsByTag = document.getElementsByTag("table");
... then work with the table or any other element
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Create the URL of the page. Open a connection to the url. Set the input stream. Read all data from the stream. This will be the source of the page.

URL url = new URL("https://www.national-lottery.co.uk/player/p/results.ftl");
URLConnection connection = url.openConnection();
InputStream stream = connection.getInputStream();
byte[] data = new byte[stream.available()];

stream.read(data);
stream.close();

String source = new String(data);
+2


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If the site does not provide an api or web service that allows you to ask for lottery numbers, you may need to clear the page's html source. It looks like the numbers are stored in a simple html list:

<ul>
  <li>12</li>
  <li>16</li>
  <li>23</li>
  <li>25</li>
  <li>31</li>
  <li>42</li>
  <li class="bonus">18</li>
</ul>

There are many good Java HTML parsers out there. Here are some projects:

I looked at the site you are interested in and it looks like they have a history page with lottery numbers for several days:

https://www.national-lottery.co.uk/player/lotto/results/results.ftl

This is probably the best cleanup page.

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