Master Hosts File, step 1 to 3, of 4

by Baz Cuda

Version 1 (July 12, 2019)

Download (110 downloads)

1. Downloads the Steven Black repository from github.
(https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts/)
2. Unzips the file.
3. Merges all the many "hosts" files into one file.

There are three flow beginning blocks so that on subsequent runs you don't have to re-download the zip file or re-unzip it.

Step 4, uploaded as a separate flow, processes the 24MB merged file, currently standing at over 890,000 lines, and removes all lines which don't contain a URL, and then removes all the duplicate URLs. This reduces the hosts file down to ~72,000 distinct URLs which can then be loaded into apps such as DNS66.

This was written as a learning exercise with a practical purpose.
Constructive comments are most welcome.

Please note, I only run step 4 on my Asus gaming laptop (running inside BlueStacks, the Android emulator). It takes 30 minutes, but it shows the amazing capabilities of Automate.
My Samsung Galaxy s10+ 512GB took 50 minutes to process the first 170,000 records; my laptop caught it up in less than 5 minutes :D. It shows that, given the right resources, Automate can be used for some hefty processing. On my phone, Automate was processing 100 records per second; on my laptop it was processing 1000 records per second.

I hope you will find my use of Automate interesting and parts of the flow useful in your own flows. I've tried to exploit the flexibility of the layout tools to make the flow, um....flow :D

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