Creating a Channel Crawler Bot

[g0dFraY]

As adron said, it would take more then days to obtain a list, even then by the time your finished the list will be inaccurate. There are also unlimited combinations for channels, a three digit channel has afew
example:
123
231
321
312
213
132

image even a six digit channel. May i also ask what the purpose of this is? Why would one want to know all the channels?

Edit:
You also have people that hang in ASCII channels, i think obtaining such a list is virtually impossible unless ofcourse you ask blizzard. But they will respond with something like: "We can not give you this list due to the privacy act." Something like that, believe me

[o.OV]

It's not unlimited.
Channels are limited to 31 characters total.
The reason why Adron was against this
was because the number of
possible of combinations is daunting
and you would have to be out of your mind
to attempt something such as this.
Permutations.. ouch.

[Lenny]

Well if you looking specifically for clan channels, you could easily idle a bot in "Clan Recruitment", it could record text while also take profile's of people who join the channel.....

It's the most practical approach

[Eric]

Wouldn't be THAT hard if you were only looking for clan channels and you had a decent amount of keys and proxies at your disposal, since clan channels can only be 2-4 characters long.

[UserLoser.]

Wouldn't be THAT hard if you were only looking for clan channels and you had a decent amount of keys and proxies at your disposal, since clan channels can only be 2-4 characters long.

Clan channels must be >= 7 characters long

[Eric]

Wouldn't be THAT hard if you were only looking for clan channels and you had a decent amount of keys and proxies at your disposal, since clan channels can only be 2-4 characters long.

Clan channels must be >= 7 characters long

Yes, but since "Clan " never changes, it massively affects the number of possible combinations.

[Flame]

You could make something similar to a database of all channels visited by the bot, and recording other various information about that channel, similar to a list that records every user the bot makes contact with.

[Spht]

Tested my method today, for 10 minutes on USEast and 10 minutes on USWest. Here are the channels the bot collected over that time period:

USEast:
clan eG
clan ZiXz
clan FF4e
clan NoA
clan RIP
clan Tos
clan Ez
clan Kali
clan GRRR
clan NaMe
clan NWTR
clan TiTz
clan NAoC
clan ShAs
clan SkY
clan FaWo
clan Unit
clan UCA
clan Holy
clan GM
clan xTFx
clan xCKx
clan DKOG
clan PIGS
clan wwp
clan fg
clan oPKo
clan xEPx
clan AnR
clan b2rk
clan LoH
clan SGL
clan AnTi
clan DsFx
clan EFX
clan ub3R
clan FwH
clan XxX
clan PVVP
clan EDyn
clan Maps
clan TtHb
clan xxBA
clan SeX
clan MRCY
clan FARP
clan bZrK
clan JD
clan LotF
clan seeD
clan xKAx
clan GanG
clan 46n2
clan xRx
clan SOTA
clan SNiP
clan PotM
clan XXXX
clan nswt
clan gr
clan AiX
clan X69X
clan EW
clan PoC
clan AGTS
clan Roma
clan AM
clan SPFR
clan DLx

USWest:
clan GAZ
clan TidE
clan RTG
clan tha
clan SLAY
clan AUSN
clan DotL
clan FWG
clan KOCL
clan LoVE
clan EnT
clan xP
clan BoA
clan iaC
clan GaNg
clan LGoC
clan FAK3
clan kota
clan BloG
clan aWp
clan DGNB
clan Wolf
clan UDNE
clan FAKE
clan RPE
clan GotL
clan SBLM
clan HYPE
clan REFI
clan GIRL
clan caps
clan nKh
clan DaG
clan GDS
clan DRAG
clan TOXI
clan KgZ
clan PnY
clan BsKr
clan rT
clan AUSA
clan LGnD
clan EmTs
clan GHO
clan POJO
clan KotU
clan EotB
clan 0zR
clan duma
clan SK8
clan xL
clan WMD
clan WCRs
clan MTD
clan Syn
clan SKK
clan Bms
clan ansn
clan TDO
clan DARK

[iago]

I would just have a database of channels. Users could submit via the web or command. Although you would either have to sort through these using what's real/what's not, or if the bot joins the channel and it's empty, it deletes that channel and goes about it's business.

:edit: grammar/punctuation.

That's what I was going to say

That, combined with Spht's idea, would get a reasonably big list

[c0ol]

I actually made this exact bot, heres how it worked:
It would start with a small set of reliable feeder channels, these need to be high and diversly trafficed, i used clan w@r, Open Tech, Town Square and sex.
multiple bots would idle in these channels listening to the chat and parse what was said for possible channel names using a set of pattern matches.
Upon finding a possible channel the bot would inspect its list of known channels, if the channel was not charted, it would go to it and idle awaiting chat.  It had a timeout of like 30 mins in which it would return to its feeder channel.
If the new  found channel was active, it would go from there to new channels apon hearing them, then  return to the secondary channel if idle.

This worked pretty well, i got a list of over 500 channels as i recall before i lost it due to a corrupt harddrive (ReiserFS can die please)
anyway thats my .02$

[FuzZ]

Hmm.. I personally would set the timeout rate a little lower.
question though, did it successfully parse channels with spaces?
also, I would have a bot just designated to the use of joining the channels found (This way you don't miss any possible other channels from the 'feeder bot')

I'll be willing to host/write the php script to add a channel to a MySQL database which will be available to the public through another script if someone is willing to write the bot ( I have enough bot projects going )
Reply/IM/PM/Email me~

:EDIT:

I've been going over this idea, it would work well, i'll probably need some help designing/writing some of the php if anyone is interested in doing this

[Networks]

OR! Since blizzard.com publically posts updates on clans all over battle.net why not just make "googlebot" that roams around on the war3 pages on blizzard.com? I am sure there is a link on each page to take and add. All the war3 channels are public and able to be seen...

[FuzZ]

ok, and how do you intend to get op channels from Blizzard.com ??

it didn't get added because no one from Clan zer0 joined the channel while the bot was present?

[FuzZ]

it might be handy for someone that's new to battle.net or someone that's looking for a clan to checkout a page that has a list of channels.
I suppose they could use blizzards Clan pages but it would leave out op chans along with other chans.

All in all, it's rather pointless.

[iago]

Why don't you just release a chatbot that reports to a main server for every populated channel it finds?