Service Wrapper: a system for converting web data into web services

Abstract

Web services are widely used in many areas via callable APIs, however, data are not always available in this way. We always need to get some data from web pages whose structure is not in order. Many developers use web data extraction methods to generate wrappers to get useful contents from websites and convert them into well-structured files. These methods, however, are designed specifically for professional wrapper program developers and not friendly to users without expertise in this domain. In this work, we construct a service wrapper system to convert available data in web pages into web services. Additionally, a set of algorithms are introduced to solve problems in the whole conversion process. People can use our system to convert web data into web services with fool-style operations and invoke these services by one simple step, which greatly expands the use of web data. Our cases show the ease of use, high availability, and stability of our system.