Home Automation Archive by category "Web Scraping" (Page 14)

Category: Web Scraping

Web scraping (web harvesting or web data extraction) is a computer software technique of extracting information from websites. Usually, such software programs simulate human exploration of the World Wide Web by either implementing low-level Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), or embedding a fully-fledged web browser, such as Mozilla Firefox.
Web scraping is closely related to web indexing, which indexes information on the web using a bot or web crawler and is a universal technique adopted by most search engines. In contrast, web scraping focuses more on the transformation of unstructured data on the web, typically in HTML format, into structured data that can be stored and analyzed in a central local database or spreadsheet. Web scraping is also related to web automation, which simulates human browsing using computer software. Uses of web scraping include online price comparison, contact scraping, weather data monitoring, website change detection, research, web mashup and web data integration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping

Web Scraping and emailing data to client via Outlook

Web Scraping and emailing dataWeb Scraping and emailing data

Do you frequently  access a Web page / then have to write an email regarding the data you gathered?  I had to look at our SharePoint and then email clients based on what I found.   The email is sent via Outlook and is tailored, specifically, to my client.  Saves me a ton of time!

It is easy to use AutoHotKey to read various aspects of a SharePoint site and write custom emails tailored to the respondents.

Web Scraping and emailing data video demonstration

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSe0kky9AzM

Using a strong Naming Convention & RegEx are keys to automating metrics!

naming conventions

Naming Convention and Regular Expression (RegEx)

Having a strong naming convention can make reporting on your metrics a breeze when you use a regular expression to break out-decrypt the naming scheme. This video shows how easy it is for us to extract: Region, Language, Campaign Type, etc. from our campaign names by using a regular expression. It also points out that there is no need to be stuck with poor acronyms for your reporting.Group of coworkers seated around a table in a bright office, talking together with a green reusable water bottle in front of them

In my above example I use AutoHotKey with Excel.  If you add the function, Excel can do RegEx itself however (for some crazy reason) it isn’t built into it.

Web Scraping with AutoHotkey 101.5-Returning InnerTEXT, Value, OuterHTML

Web Scraping with AutoHotkeyAutoHotkey Merchandise-White Stress ballThis is a quick review of getting text from a page using Web Scraping with AutoHotkey.   Often people new to Web Scraping will get hung-up on a minor detail wasting a lot of time.  This video helps point out a few of the common issues like not having a valid pointer and returning the wrong attributes.  Get the iWB2 Learner tool (remember it only works with IE.  If you’re beyond this video you might also check out this one dealing with troubleshooting.

Below is the code I review in the video

Web Scraping with AutoHotkey video overview- Returning the correct content