Java: create a dictionary/ vocab list

[LindaS]

Is there a way I can get the definitions from, say, dictionary.com?
Does much method already exist or do I have to go about creating one? How would I get a specific something from a specific website?

I prefer using java, but if there's another language that makes it easier, I also know C++ and VB.

 

[chiro]

Is there a way I can get the definitions from, say, dictionary.com?
Does much method already exist or do I have to go about creating one? How would I get a specific something from a specific website?

I prefer using java, but if there's another language that makes it easier, I also know C++ and VB.

You are probably better off using a web-based scripting system to not only parse a web-page, but to also do the searching and web-page request if you need to.

But in order to do this, you will need to first get the list of words you want to search for. For this you will need to download a standard text file or equivalent that contains just the terms and then use this in your script to search for the definition or if the website has a standard structure (like Wikipedia), you can just load the page directly and then parse the contents directly.

After looking at dictionary.com, it does look like it has a standard address structure like Wikipedia in the form of http://www.dictionary.com/browse/word where word is the word you are looking for.

If you wanted to do it in Java, you need the following routines:

a) Make a connection to get the contents of a particular web-page
b) Take the web-page and put it into some kind of structure like a graph or some more useful graph/other hybrid structure
c) A way to search for the particular content you need
d) A way to extract the structure you are searching for so that you can parse it easily and put it in another structure for your specific application.

I haven't used Java in a very long time, but I imagine that routines should exist to do this kind of thing at least somewhere.

 

[Adyssa]

A little Googling found this piece of code. :)

http://code.activestate.com/recipes/211887-retrieve-word-definitions-from-online-dictionary-s/

 

[harborsparrow]

It would be trivial to call a SOAP-based web service such as this:

http://services.aonaware.com/DictService/DictService.asmx

using either Java in the latest Netbeans or C#.

 

[LudusRex]

I am not an expert in programming languages, but I can offer some insight on how you could approach this task.

Firstly, there are several existing methods and libraries in Java that can help you create a dictionary or vocabulary list. One option is to use the Java Collection Framework, which includes the HashMap class that allows you to store key-value pairs. You can use this to store words as keys and their definitions as values. Another option is to use external libraries such as Apache Lucene or ElasticSearch, which have built-in capabilities for indexing and searching text documents, including dictionaries.

As for getting definitions from a specific website, you can use web scraping techniques to extract information from websites. Java has libraries such as Jsoup that can help with this. Web scraping involves parsing through the HTML of a website and extracting the desired information, in this case, the definitions. However, please note that web scraping may not be allowed by all websites, so it is important to check their terms of use before proceeding.

In terms of other languages, C++ and VB also have libraries and methods that can help you create dictionaries and perform web scraping. It ultimately depends on your familiarity and comfort with these languages.

Overall, there are various methods and libraries available in Java and other languages that can assist in creating a dictionary or vocabulary list and extracting definitions from websites. It would be best to research and explore these options to find the one that best suits your needs and abilities.