Multiple WebParser data request

[balala]

Hello everybody,

I have a WebParser related question, which just arose these days.
I have a Gmail skin (the Gmail skin of my Mirage package), which follows up to 5 Gmail accounts. Works well, but my question is the following: there are five parent WebParser measures ([MeasureGmail1] - [MeasureGmail5]), each of them following one Gmail account. When refreshing the skin all five parent WebParser measures acquire the appropriate data, but does this represent five information request on Gmail servers? How is Gmail treating this request: as one or as five requests?

Thank very much for every information.

[Brian]

Based on your description, this would be 5 separate requests with Gmail processing the 5 requests separately. It would be like opening 5 different tabs, and going to the same website on all 5 of them. The webserver would treat each tab (or request) differently. I don't believe servers "combine" multiple requests, if that is what you are asking about.

-Brian

[balala]

if that is what you are asking about.

Yes, this am I asking about. And this way my guess as well, but was not sure. Thanks you very much for the details.

[Yincognito]

Hello everybody,

I have a WebParser related question, which just arose these days.
I have a Gmail skin (the Gmail skin of my Mirage package), which follows up to 5 Gmail accounts. Works well, but my question is the following: there are five parent WebParser measures ([MeasureGmail1] - [MeasureGmail5]), each of them following one Gmail account. When refreshing the skin all five parent WebParser measures acquire the appropriate data, but does this represent five information request on Gmail servers? How is Gmail treating this request: as one or as five requests?

Thank very much for every information.

Yes, they are 5 requests. It doesn't really matter what site we're talking about, any WebParser parent measure represents 1 request to whatever URL / site it uses. In terms of downloaded content, this is alleviated by the fact that, via its default Flags=Resync, WebParser only downloads a resource if it has been modified since the last time it was downloaded and uses the cache instead (so, for example, it won't redownload an image if it stayed the same on the site), but even that would still be a request to the site, regardless of the downloaded amount.

One can avoid making multiple requests for data on a site only if there is a way (usually provided by the site itself) to "aggregate" multiple requests in a single one or "filter" a larger request to get specific data, like, for example, using query strings. I don't use Rainmeter to check my mail and didn't write a skin to do that (yet), and due to the personal nature of mail accounts I'm not sure GMail provides such methods, but if they do and one can take advantage of that in a Rainmeter skin, then it would be a good way to limit the amount of such requests, if needed. Some of the methods of getting multiple mail account data by other software than Rainmeter involve being signed in on those accounts at all times, while some others don't require that.

In your case, since Google is a giant and there are tons of people with tons of accounts that check their email accounts either manually or automatically on a frequent basis all over the world, I doubt that you'd have to worry about any measure intended to limit the amount of such requests from them. Even so, a reasonable interval between requests (e.g. a couple of minutes) and a reasonable number of accounts to check for (e.g. not for everyone in your city) is always a good thing to have, irrespective of the site you make those requests to.

EDIT: Well, Brian beat me to it, but I added some other info you might be interested in.
EDIT2: By the way, one thing I noticed when I wrote my scraping Chrome extension was that if there's a lot of data to download, sometimes "concurrent" (i.e. same time) requests lead to some of the data not being downloaded (hence, I did it sequentially, which leads to more time till it's completed, but zero failures). Not sure if it was a Chrome thing or a general browser thing or I just didn't get the sync / async stuff, but it happened for all similar extensions I tested before writing my own (incidentally, it can happen with Rainmeter as well, in certain cases). Obviously, I doubt it will happen for small amounts of data like checking your GMail accounts involves.

[balala]

In your case, since Google is a giant and there are tons of people with tons of accounts that check their email accounts either manually or automatically on a frequent basis all over the world, I doubt that you'd have to worry about any measure intended to limit the amount of such requests from them. Even so, a reasonable interval between requests (e.g. a couple of minutes) and a reasonable number of accounts to check for (e.g. not for everyone in your city) is always a good thing to have, irrespective of the site you make those requests to.

Thanks for your description. Yep, I'm not concerned at all about the requests, especially that I have been using the skin for years and had no problems. Just the question arose these days and was not sure, even if had the same guess.
I think question is answered now.

Thank both of you for the details.

[Yincognito]

Thank both of you for the details.