Tom Insam

URI-Title

I keep having to find the title of things on the web. This seems like a really simple request, just get() the object, parse for a title tag, you're done. Ha, I wish. There are several problems with this approach:

  • What if the resource is on a very slow server? Do we wait for ever or what?
  • What if the resource is a 900 gig file? You don't want to download that.
  • What if the page title isn't in a title tag, but is buried in the HTML somewhere?
  • What if the resource is an MP3 file, or a word document or something?

So, let's solve these issues once.