New Simple/Robust Case Status Scanner

[tominavhech]

Hi Talkitive,
Thanks for your effort in creating a very useful tool.
In spite of the bureaucracy here, I managed to install the latest version of java on my m/c. However, there is one more hurdle before I cd see ur wonderful tool working. As a corporate policy, we have to enter username/pwd for the firewall/realm first when we open any new browser, without which we cannot access external sites. Is it possible to modify this tool to accept these parameters?
thanks a ton...

 

[talkative]

tominavhech - i don't know enough details about how your company is implenting the authentication, so writing code to automate it would be hard. also, if your company is so strict, they may not like you running a scanner.

can you not run it elsewhere, outside the company? FYI - dial up connections work just fine with the scanner, as it does not transfer a lot of data.

~T

 

[raj_ca94086]

Hi Talkative,
When I run the scanner, I get this error message. Can you please tell me what I might be doing wrong.

C:\>java -jar tscanner.jar -database status.db -search -type 140,485 -start WAC0413254700 -end WAC0413254899
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoSuchMethodError
at talkative.scanner.Parser.normalizeCaseType(Parser.java:155)
at talkative.scanner.Main.main(Main.java:105)

I have unzipped the jar file into my C drive.

 

[talkative]

> I have unzipped the jar file into my C drive.

You mean, you unzipped the ZIP file right? You shouldn't unzip the JAR file. (If you did indeed unzip the JAR file, then delete the directories c:\src\talkative, c:\meta-inf and c:\talkative to clean up)

I think the most likely reason is because you're using a old JRE. Try getting a newer version of JRE by clicking the "Get it now" button at www.java.com.


~T

 

[aonflux]

hi again talkative

This is really a great scanner -- I see that you keep updating it and I had 2 suggestions for your next version ---
1) Could the date on which the case is approved also appear in the database? Right now it only says --- this case has been approved.
2) Could there be a way to get the report "sorted" by the Case numbers ---ascending or descending is fine --- Right now when I look at the database or add numbers on another date-- the database automatically updates with all the numbers but they are in random order.
Thanks once again for a great tool.

 

[talkative]

aonflux, sure not a problem.

i've implemented your request #2, so now the database should be sorted starting with v1.33

as for #1, currently, the scanner writes only the first sentence to keep the database small in size.

i'll consider storing the entire message. given that this will make the database much larger, i'll have to rewrite some parts (like backup, read/save etc) to make them more efficient. so i'll hold off doing this till i have some time on hand.

~T

 

[aonflux]

Thanks!

Please do not worry about request#1 .. I didnt realise the amount of programming that would be required... thanks for request# 2.
Later.

 

[no_id]

great tool - but one stupid question

Hey talkative,
AMAZING tool. Except I did something stupid. I didnt realize that I can only access 200 cases (I had some setup problems, and by the time I got it to work, I had forgotten about the 200 case rule), and the app now says "All proxies failed" which I expected.
1. Can I still use the scanner after 24 hrs ?
2. How do you use the -suck -nolocal option ? I mean I did not understand the file format to be used.

(I know this is a stupid q, but please bear with me).

Thanks again for the application, its great. Please help me out, I would really appreciate it.

no Id

 

[talkative]

great you find it useful. the -nolocal will ensure queries are routed through external proxy only, so your machine won't run into the 200 case quota. the suck option finds these proxies from a web page. try this:

-nolocal -suck "http://www.stayinvisible.com/index.pl/proxy_list?order=&offset=100"

you should be back on track again. the proxy file will be created and used automatically, simply specify a filename with the suck option. next time, leave out the -suck, and it will pick known good proxies from the last time you did a suck. it continously rates proxies, so it will know which are reliable ones. after a few -suck runs, i've never needed to suck in any more proxies till date.

the database file is plain text with a seperator. just take a look and it'll be clear.

wishing you speedy approval
~t

ps: you need to do the all case type scan only once. once you have your DB of 140,485 cases, you can scan those exclusively and that'll be much quicker (-refresh option)

 

[no_id]

thanks and results

I did run the scanner (thanks to talkative's advice) and I am posting the results in the CSC board itself (even though the results I am posting are for VSC) since that is the link given in the original scanner board.

Please move it to the VSC thread if necessary.

 

[talkative]

rarebell, check the first post in this thread. it has both the scanner attached for downloading as well as fairly detailed instructions. if you need more, let me know.

~t

 

[wanna_my_GC]

its a Cool utility

rarebell, check the first post in this thread. it has both the scanner attached for downloading as well as fairly detailed instructions. if you need more, let me know.

~t

talkative thanks for this cool tool

 

[needAgcNOW]

Talktive:
thank you for the wonderful program - I have been using that for a while and it's stable

It would be much better if you can get the LUD information; also for i-485 cases, it cannot distinguish the "Fingerprint review" and "case received"

 

[talkative]

Thanks, glad you find it of use

> much better if you can get the LUD information

Unfortunately, LUD is available only if you have a case in a portfolio, not from their public web site pages (which the scanner uses).

> it cannot distinguish the "Fingerprint review" and "case received"

Right - I didn't pick that as a separate report line item because FP-1 doesn't mean much about case status (it's generated by third party it appears).

If you're familiar with any programming language, let me know and I can show you how to customize Reporter.java -- it's quite easy and intended to be customized.

~T

 

[yu-ghi]

DB file of October 2004

Talkative,

It is really a wonderful tool. However I have problems in scanning. Tried with different proxy sites, but still failing.
If any of you got a datafile of Oct 18/19th, can you please send me? I am looking for WAC050125XXXX.

Thanks
Yu-ghi

 

[ediman]

Thanks a million

Hi Talkative,

Thanks a lot for this wonderful tool. You wrote somewhere that we have access to source code. But I could not find it. Let me know where can I find it.

regards

 

[talkative]

ediman - great you found it useful.
to get source code, just extract the jar file:

jar xf tscanner.jar

that will give you the source and the compiled classes.

the "jar" tool comes with JDK
jar files are same as zip files, so you can open it with winzip too.

~T

 

[talkative]

rarebell, it must have created a backup copy of your database in the most recent run, named mydb.previous -- try looking at it.

when did you lose data? did you hit ^C by any chance to exit the program?

!T

 

[talkative]

rarebell - i don't think extracting the JAR would cause loss of the database. it must have been something else. also, it must have occured more than two runs ago, because even the backup is messed up. at this point, i don't know how this could have happened.

one possibility is that the database file may have got moved or deleted accidentally. the scanner will create a empty database file if it could find none which may be what you're seeing. in this case, it may be useful to see if it got misplaced somewhere.

finally, i know the pain of lot of work going away due to some bad command. i don't know what else i can do (i already backup the database file and give a parameter to control how often the DB gets written to disk). sorry

~t

 

[josamdee]

talkative, you have done an excellent job of writing the scanner!!

talkative, you have done an excellent job of writing the scanner!!

I have tweaked the scanner's Parser.increment() method to increment case# by Day if N (N=20 right now) invalid cases are found.

I want you to confirm if My assumption is correct

example:
if
WAC0505054767 to WAC0505054787 give the invalid error then scanner will move to next day WAC0505150000