I made a RapidShare premium link generator

[Fabiano the Spy]

So I finally decided I needed a break from game design and needed to dig into some PHP again.

I wrote a RapidShare premium link generator.

To explain how it works in "layman's terms", the server logs into a premium account I own. The server then uses the front end website as a way for the user to communicate with the premium account. The server takes the users link and sends it to Rapidshare, which will then kick the server a premium link, which the server passes over to the user.

In other words, the script has a cookie from Rapidshare which allows the server to download as a premium user. The user on the front end benefits on this.

Does the server download the file from Rapidshare and then kick a NEW download link to the user? No, not at all. You're still downloading the file from RapidShare directly, you're just using the server as a relay. Remember, the server is LITERALLY a Premium user.

I'm not going to link it due to the debate that some people consider it illegal. *shrugs*

Please note, that Rapidshare premium link generators are used A LOT. Rapidshare Premium accounts have a bandwidth download limit of 10GB a day. Premium link generators are VERY popular. You'll find a lot of them CAP your downloads to 3 or 10. And even then, by the time you find it, you won't get a successful download because it's out of bandwidth.

To remedy this, I've setup a "content blocker". This content blocker blocks users from using the script unless they fill out a short (often taking no more than 2 minute) survey.

I'm paid per survey, yes. But I'm not making bank, and I'm not really profiting. I'm just covering costs. Most of the generators out there have you set at a download cap. My generator doesn't. Most generators don't have bandwidth by the time you reach it. To counter this, I'm being paid (in theory) each time a user uses the generator. This money goes directly towards bandwidth expansion so that the generator will (hopefully) be up and with bandwidth at all times! ^_^

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I apologize and thanks for reading my own survey.


Code is poetry. :)
Just proud of the work, I suppose. Figured I'd talk about what I've been hammering away at.

Any other coders out there that has done anything like this? It was a heck of a project, and a simple Google search will show you it's in high demand.

[AtmaWeapon]

So I don't get it. Is there an API for Rapidshare? Even without an API, it doesn't seem like there's anything that would make it overly difficult. I've done some "pretend you're a browser and check for new posts on this forum" kind of apps before, and unless the site has some interesting bot resistance in place it's mostly a matter of "read HTML, write bot that submits form and parses output."

For this particular type of application, I'd assume the "hard to find" part has more to do with the nature of the application than relative difficulty. Who wants to spend a couple of hours perfecting an application that takes something you paid for and lets some script kiddies exhaust it almost immediately? Yours is a little more clever because it has *potential* to make you money, so that definitely provides some motive. Also if you've never written a website bot before it's fun for the first few attempts, so that might have been it.

I guess the reason I'm so disparaging is this:

Code is poetry.

Yes, yes it is. But in this case you aren't posting poetry. Rather than "The Cask of Amontillado" what we have is Edgar Allen Poe saying "One time there was this crazy guy and he led another guy down into a wine cellar and entombed him alive." Description of what the code does is almost always unimpressive compared to the code that was required to do it. Part of the problem is you are speaking in layman's terms; many people wouldn't appreciate details like "there's actually a hidden field in the form that contains a code you have to checksum and send as part of the POST or you get rejected" if it exists. I'd appreciate it. Most people wouldn't appreciate hearing, "I thought I might expand this into a more general rapidshare automation tool so I wrote a library that abstracts the screen scraping into an API" but library design is a source of underwear tents in my household.

So how'd you do it? What were the interesting parts? What language did you use (actually it looks like you used PHP based on a re-read; wasn't super clear at first)? Why did you choose that language? Was there some clever trickery to attempt to defeat bots? If so, how'd you get around it? Why not post a few tantalizing code snippets so we can have rousing arguments about your coding style and implementation details? That's some discussion with meat!