I have created a database for PAD** files called PadDatabase.com. This database currently holds information on more than 48,000 applications and growing weekly. The problem that I ran into was I needed a way to poll the PAD files to check for new information, check for PAD files not longer in existence, PAD files that have been introduced into the database from blacklisted companies (I have many and maintain an active blacklist). So, like any good developer, I wrote one.


PAD Crawler is a PHP application that gives me all the tools I need to easily and effectively crawler and poll the entire database. Right now it includes a PAD Crawler, Duplicate Finder, Validity Checker and a Cleanup Tool. This is purely an internal tool to Veign and probably will never been seen by anyone else.

** – PAD files are small XML files that fully describe an application and are commonly used by shareware and freeware authors to distribute information about an application.

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