A dirt simple bash script for printing the list of companies licensed to sponsor Tier 2 and Tier 5 Visas.
./uk_sponsors.sh
Prints the list of sponsors. Use other unix tools to filter the output, eg grep.
docker run wamilton/uk_sponsors.sh
If you want to speed things up, consider sharing a volume into /tmp so that the pdf doesn't have to be downloaded each time.
Uses wget, xidel and pdftohtml to grab the regularly updated pdf linked
from here and pull out the left column of the messy table and print it.
A nicer implementation could do more work to transform the table into a non-messy table and print decent column output, and perhaps store things in sqlite or similar with a list of their pdf publication dates. I am not using this tool to find companies to which to apply, but to decide whether to apply to a company I'm already considering, so I really just need to know whether a given company is on the list.