How to get Alexa Ranking In Java

By mkyong | Updated: January 21, 2013

Viewed: 10,195

Tags: alexa seo

In this example, we show you how to use Java and DOM XML parser to get the Alexa ranking from below the undocumented API :

http://data.alexa.com/data?cli=10&url=domainName

1. Alexa API

For example, type following URL in your browser :

http://data.alexa.com/data?cli=10&url=mkyong.com

Alexa will return back following XML result :

<ALEXA VER="0.9" URL="mkyong.com/" HOME="0" AID="=">
<DMOZ>
<SITE BASE="mkyong.com/" 
	TITLE="J2EE Web Development" 
	DESC="Java / J2EE Web Development Tutorials, 
	which involve Spring, Hibernate, Struts, Maven, jUnit, TestNG, jQuery...">
<CATS/>
</SITE>
</DMOZ>
<SD>
<POPULARITY URL="mkyong.com/" TEXT="10720" SOURCE="panel"/>
<REACH RANK="7924"/>
<RANK DELTA="+600"/>
<COUNTRY CODE="IN" NAME="India" RANK="3542"/>
</SD>
</ALEXA>

Refer to the element “POPULARITY“, the value of “TEXT” attribute is the Alexa ranking.

2. Java, DOM and Alexa API

In Java, just send a normal HTTP request to the API, and use XML parser to get the Alexa ranking.

package com.mkyong.seo;

import java.io.InputStream;
import java.net.URL;
import java.net.URLConnection;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
import org.w3c.dom.NodeList;

public class AlexaSEO {

	public static void main(String[] args) {

		AlexaSEO obj = new AlexaSEO();
		System.out.println("Ranking : " + obj.getAlexaRanking("mkyong.com"));

	}

	public int getAlexaRanking(String domain) {

		int result = 0;
		
		String url = "http://data.alexa.com/data?cli=10&url=" + domain;

		try {

			URLConnection conn = new URL(url).openConnection();
			InputStream is = conn.getInputStream();
			
			DocumentBuilder dBuilder = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance()
					.newDocumentBuilder();
			Document doc = dBuilder.parse(is);

			Element element = doc.getDocumentElement();

			NodeList nodeList = element.getElementsByTagName("POPULARITY");
			if (nodeList.getLength() > 0) {
				Element elementAttribute = (Element) nodeList.item(0);
				String ranking = elementAttribute.getAttribute("TEXT");
				if(!"".equals(ranking)){
					result = Integer.valueOf(ranking);
				}
			}

		} catch (Exception e) {
			System.out.println(e.getMessage());
		}

		return result;
	}
}

Result :

Ranking : 10720

My website mkyong.com is ranked 10720 in Alexa, not bad.

References

1. Fetching Alexa data
2. How to get Google PageRank in Java
3. How To Read XML File In Java – (DOM Parser)