AppStore Scraper

We want a Apple AppStore scraper written in PHP. - It should read the top downloaded XMLs for each country and scrape all the info for the apps in that list (Icon, price, description). - It should also update a MySQL database acordingly, saving the changes in the price, description, etc., asociated with an App Id. ## Deliverables - The scraping script must be easily modified, so future changes in the AppStore XML format can be updated quickly. - All the data related to an App should be scraped and saved with an associated timestamp. - The scraping part and the database updating part must be independent, so any change to each part does not affect the other (it can be done in two different scripts if needed) - Either the images of the apps need to be downloaded or the URL to them has to be saved in the database. - Ranking data has to be saved to. - Be "friendly" to Apple servers, we do not want to "overload" them. Some example queries to this database could be: - Which are the top 100 downloaded apps today/yesterday/one week ago? - Which apps have reduced their price/become free? - Which is the description for XXXX app? - Which apps include the next keywords? - Which is the icon/images for this app? - Which apps have increased their ranking? Which ones are new in the top 100? - Which is the price history for this app? You don't need to program the search engine, just make sure that these queries can be easily made. To check that the script is working some of these queries will be checked against the database (v?a PHPMyAdmin or similar SQL manager). The scraping script will also be checked to be working.