Automatic crawling of encoded dynamic URLs

1. A method, comprising:

Receiving, using a computing device, an encoded URL corresponding to a web-portal page hosted by a web-portal server, wherein a text of the encoded URL does not provide information about content of the web-portal page, the content comprising a plurality of re-arrangeable portlets, and wherein the web-portal server provides, via a representational state transfer service, to a web-crawler, a navigational state information of the web-portal page using a predetermined format;

initializing a list of parameters, wherein the list identifies that the web-portal page corresponding to the encoded URL has been visited, and determining the parameters to add to the list by:

sending the encoded URL to the representational state transfer service from the web-portal server hosting the web-portal page for decoding the encoded URL;

receiving the navigational state information of the web-portal page from the representational state transfer service, wherein the navigational state information is decoded from the encoded URL, and comprises a selection-node-ID and a resource-ID, the selection-node-ID being an identifier assigned to the web-portal page, and the resource-ID being an identifier associated with a resource used by the web-portal page, wherein,

determining a type of the encoded URL based on the received representational state information, and

when the type is determined to be a resource URL, storing the resource-ID in the list of parameters; and

when the type is determined to be an engine URL, storing the selection-node-ID in the list of parameters, and

when the type is determined to be a portlet, storing information of the portlet in the list of parameters;

determining if the encoded URL has been previously visited based on the list of parameters; and

retrieving the content associated with the encoded URL if the encoded URL has not been previously visited.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: analyzing content associated with the encoded URL; and exploring an additional URL found in the content associated with the encoded URL.

3. The method of claim 2 , further comprising detecting if the additional

URL is a logout link prior to exploring the additional URL.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the navigational state information from the representational state transfer service is received in XML format.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the navigational state information includes information indicative of the type of the encoded URL.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the web-portal server uses websphere portal framework.