Numerical Web

Create Sitemap from a List of URLs of Your Sites

About Typical Sitemaps

You can create a sitemap from a list of URLs for your website. There are a few ways to do this:

  1. Use a sitemap generator tool: There are many online sitemap generators that can create a sitemap for your website from a list of URLs. Some popular options include XML Sitemaps, Google Sitemap Generator, and XML Sitemap Generator.
  2. Use a plugin: If your website is built on WordPress, you can use a sitemap plugin such as Google XML Sitemaps or Yoast SEO to generate a sitemap for your website.
  3. Manually create the sitemap: You can also create a sitemap manually by using an XML template and adding your URLs to it. The basic structure of a sitemap is:
<urlset>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/about/</loc>
  </url>
</urlset>

Replace the example.com with your website’s URL and add all your URLs in <loc> url </loc>

Once you have created your sitemap, you should submit it to Google Search Console so that Google can crawl and index your website’s pages.

C++ Programs for Generating a Sitemap

Here’s an example of a C++ program that generates a sitemap from a text file containing a list of URLs, one per line:

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>

int main() {
    std::ofstream sitemap("sitemap.xml");

    // Write the sitemap header
    sitemap << "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n";
    sitemap << "<urlset xmlns=\"http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9\">\n";

    // Open the input file containing the URLs
    std::ifstream urls("urls.txt");
    std::string url;
    while (std::getline(urls, url)) {
        // Write each URL as a <url> element in the sitemap
        sitemap << "  <url>\n";
        sitemap << "    <loc>" << url << "</loc>\n";
        sitemap << "  </url>\n";
    }

    // Write the sitemap footer
    sitemap << "</urlset>";

    // Close the sitemap file
    sitemap.close();

    return 0;
}

You can use any text editor to create url.txt file, and write all your urls in it by row.

Please note that This is a simple example, and a real-world sitemap may need to include additional information such as the last modification date of the page and the change frequency. Also, you can add many options and parameters to your sitemap, you can refer to sitemaps.org for more information.

Extends to Realworld Sitemap Formats

A typical real-world sitemap may include additional information such as the last modification date of the page, the change frequency, and the priority of the page. Here’s an example of a more complete sitemap:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
    <lastmod>2022-12-31</lastmod>
    <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
    <priority>1.0</priority>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/about/</loc>
    <lastmod>2022-12-31</lastmod>
    <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
    <priority>0.8</priority>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/products/</loc>
    <lastmod>2022-12-31</lastmod>
    <changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
    <priority>0.9</priority>
  </url>
</urlset>
  • <loc> : URL of the page.
  • <lastmod> : The date of last modification of the file. The date should be in W3C Datetime format.
  • <changefreq> : How frequently the page is likely to change. Acceptable values are: always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, never.
  • <priority> : The priority of this URL relative to other URLs on your site. The value for this tag is a number between 0.0 and 1.0

You can also add image:image element for each URL, if you want to include images in your sitemap.

<url>
   <loc>http://www.example.com/image.jpg</loc>
   <image:image>
      <image:loc>http://example.com/images/image.jpg</image:loc>
   </image:image>
</url>

It’s important to note that the <image:image> element should be a child of the <url> element, and the <image:loc> element should contain the URL of the image.

You can refer to https://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html for detailed information about sitemaps and all the options and parameters you can use in sitemaps.

Here’s an example of a C++ program that generates a sitemap from a CSV file containing a list of URLs, last modification date, change frequency, and priority as columns:

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
#include <sstream>

int main() {
    std::ofstream sitemap("sitemap.xml");

    // Write the sitemap header
    sitemap << "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n";
    sitemap << "<urlset xmlns=\"http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9\">\n";

    // Open the input file containing the URLs
    std::ifstream urls("urls.csv");
    std::string line;
    while (std::getline(urls, line)) {
        std::string url, lastmod, changefreq, priority;
        std::stringstream lineStream(line);
        std::getline(lineStream, url, ',');
        std::getline(lineStream, lastmod, ',');
        std::getline(lineStream, changefreq, ',');
        std::getline(lineStream, priority, ',');

        // Write each URL as a <url> element in the sitemap
        sitemap << "  <url>\n";
        sitemap << "    <loc>" << url << "</loc>\n";
        sitemap << "    <lastmod>" << lastmod << "</lastmod>\n";
        sitemap << "    <changefreq>" << changefreq << "</changefreq>\n";
        sitemap << "    <priority>" << priority << "</priority>\n";
        sitemap << "  </url>\n";
    }

    // Write the sitemap footer
    sitemap << "</urlset>";

    // Close the sitemap file
    sitemap.close();

    return 0;
}

You can create urls.csv file using any text editor, write each url in one row and separate columns by ‘,’ like this :

http://www.example.com/,2022-12-31,daily,1.0
http://www.example.com/about/,2022-12-31,monthly,0.8
http://www.example.com/products/,2022-12-31,weekly,0.9

Please note that the above code uses the std::getline() function to extract the URLs, last modification date, change frequency, and priority from the CSV file. This function reads a line from the input stream and separates it into fields using a specified delimiter.

You can also use other libraries such as ‘csv’ to read a csv file in C++.

Error checking and handling to make that the input file is the correct format

In a real-world scenario, you should also include some error checking and handling to make sure that the input file is in the correct format and that the URLs, last modification date, change frequency, and priority values are valid.

Here’s an example of how you could add error checking and handling to the previous code:

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
#include <sstream>
#include <ctime>

int main() {
    std::ofstream sitemap("sitemap.xml");

    // Write the sitemap header
    sitemap << "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n";
    sitemap << "<urlset xmlns=\"http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9\">\n";

    // Open the input file containing the URLs
    std::ifstream urls("urls.csv");
    std::string line;
    while (std::getline(urls, line)) {
        std::string url, lastmod, changefreq, priority;
        std::stringstream lineStream(line);
        std::getline(lineStream, url, ',');
        std::getline(lineStream, lastmod, ',');
        std::getline(lineStream, changefreq, ',');
        std::getline(lineStream, priority, ',');

        // Check that the URL is valid
        if (!isValidUrl(url)) {
            std::cerr << "Invalid URL: " << url << std::endl;
            continue;
        }

        // Check that the last modification date is valid
        struct tm tm;
        if (strptime(lastmod.c_str(), "%Y-%m-%d", &tm) == NULL) {
            std::cerr << "Invalid last modification date: " << lastmod << std::endl;
            continue;
        }

        // Check that the change frequency is valid
        if (!isValidChangeFreq(changefreq)) {
            std::cerr << "Invalid change frequency: " << changefreq << std::endl;
            continue;
        }

        // Check that the priority is valid
        double priorityValue;
        try {
            priorityValue = std::stod(priority);
            if (priorityValue < 0.0 || priorityValue > 1.0) {
                throw std::invalid_argument("");
            }
        } catch (const std::invalid_argument& e) {
            std::cerr << "Invalid priority: " << priority << std::endl;
            continue;
        }

        // Write each URL as a <url> element in the sitemap
        sitemap << "  <url>\n";
        sitemap << "    <loc>" << url << "</loc>\n";
        sitemap << "    <lastmod>" << lastmod << "</lastmod>\n";
        sitemap << "    <changefreq>" << changefreq << "</changefreq>\n";
        sitemap << "    <priority>" << priorityValue << "</priority>\n";
        sitemap << "  </url>\n";
   }

    // Write the sitemap footer
    sitemap << "</urlset>";

    // Close the sitemap file
    sitemap.close();

    return 0;
}

here is the rest of the code for the functions isValidUrl() and isValidChangeFreq():

bool isValidUrl(const std::string& url) {
    // Add code here to check if the URL is valid
    // You can use regular expressions or other methods
    return true;
}

bool isValidChangeFreq(const std::string& changefreq) {
    static const std::string validChangeFreqs[] = { "always", "hourly", "daily", "weekly", "monthly", "yearly", "never" };
    for (const auto& validChangeFreq : validChangeFreqs) {
        if (changefreq == validChangeFreq) {
            return true;
        }
    }
    return false;
}

You can add different methods to check url format, you can use the library ‘uri’ to check url validation. Also, you can check changefreq value by storing valid change frequency values in an array and then check if the input changefreq is in the array or not.

Please note that this is just an example, and in a real-world scenario, you should use a more robust method for validating URLs, last modification date, change frequency and priority.

Posted

in

by

squall321

Tags:

, , , ,

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *