Show HN: Screen scraping for dummies app | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Screen scraping for dummies app

http://netreputation.co.uk/extractor/

I am embarrassed about this version but I thought I would develop it based on feedback.

The idea was to be able to create something that any one could start using very fast. Not necessarily programmers.

Clickable . http://netreputation.co.uk/extractor/

Thanks

It would be nice to be able to use xpaths to get to the data I want to extract. Having done quite a few extractors in the past I find xpaths to be the easiest way to finding the correct data. Just a thought.

xpaths might be especially useful for programmers yes. I am thinking I will add support for it. Thanks :-)

It's kind of like a basic dapper? http://open.dapper.net/

haven't used it much. I wanted a pattern engine so the intelligence finally rests with the user without the user needing to know regex or even programming.

nice! What are your future plans for it? E.g. which features do you plan to add for my grand-mother :-) ?

thanks. couple of things I have in mind

1. more output formats like JSON, HTML, Doc, RSS, ATOM

2. allow programming in loops.. for example you want to be able to scrape many pages of data for a google search result then you need a hack in the url itself. This is difficult to accomplish but I am think I can add support to some of the pagination patterns to start with

3. to be able to give more control over the HTML, maybe a panel which helps extract the relevant one from the target page

sounds good! I like especially 1/ and would add a dead simple API to it! Is this part of your plans?

Besides, it might be intersting to play around w/ your stuff and yahoo-pipes.

Oh and please use it if you want to... I will make sure I reserve a free place for you in case I go the paid route later on :-)

my email is in my profile so you can send me yours.

yes. API is definitely a part of it and yes, I was thinking about yahoo pipes as well. :-)

That is quite nice, good work!

Thanks a lot

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