How to automatically collect posts from a forum (that match a criteria)?

[superboyac]

Is the following possible:
Use a program or something to automatically collect a bunch of posts from a forum that match a certain criteria?  For example, let's say I want to collect all the posts that a certain user did that had a certain title.  Also, if there is formatting (bold, italics, smileys), could those be grabbed also?

Take the Tech News that is regularly posted by Ehtyar, is there a program where I can collect all of those and store it on my computer somehow?  But I'm specifically interested in doing it for another forum.

[lanux128]

something like that, if can be automated will of good use. currently i use google/doco search and save the 'print' version (like this) into pdf files. unfortunately the 'print' version doesn't include any images/screenshots from a thread.

so i agree this is a good idea. reminds me of a sieve like function.

[nudone]

i've not used it but can Yahoo Pipes do this sort of thing?

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/

[adi_barb]

you should look for a web content extractor software or you may want to find a programmer who could make you the script for one or more types of forums. one must know all types of forums to easily implement some general algos for parsing their content. anyway... are you sure the forum's owners would be happy to know someone is taking their content?