Patent ID: 8595242

Claim:
A method of parsing an information string to extract desired information related to a remotely monitored image output device automatically without human intervention, wherein the image output device is configured to communicate with a monitoring computer using a plurality of application-layer communication protocols including an HTTP protocol, the method comprising: determining which of the plurality of communication protocols to use to extract the desired information from the image output device; accessing, by the monitoring computer, the image output device without human intervention using the HTTP protocol via a web server in the image output device to obtain an information string stored on the image output device, the information string including device information of the monitored image output device, when the determining step determines that the HTTP protocol is to be used to extract the desired information; determining, by the monitoring computer, based on a type of the desired information related to the device and a type of vendor and model of the image output device, data extraction information for optimally extracting the desired information from the image output device; parsing, by the monitoring computer, the information string according to the determined data extraction information to identify substrings related to the image output device within the information string, wherein the determined data extraction information includes a key string and tag-based position information relative to the key string for optimally extracting the desired information from the image output device; and extracting, by the monitoring computer, the desired information based on the information string, the identified substrings, and the determined data extraction information.