0% found this document useful (0 votes)

75 views6 pages

Selectors - Web Scraper Documentation

The document discusses different selectors available in a web scraping tool for extracting data from websites. It describes data extraction selectors, link selectors, and element selectors and provides examples of each. It also covers how to configure and use the selectors as well as selecting elements manually.

Uploaded by

23020028

We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.

Available Formats

Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

0% found this document useful (0 votes)

75 views6 pages

Selectors - Web Scraper Documentation

Uploaded by

23020028

We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.

Available Formats

Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

You are on page 1/ 6

Documentation

Installation

Open Web Scraper

Scraping a site

Selectors

Text selector

Link selector

Sitemap xml selector

Image selector

Table selector

Element attribute selector

HTML selector

Grouped selector

Element selector

Element scroll down selector

Element click selector

Pagination selector

CSS selector

Web Scraper Cloud

Sitemap sync
Notifications

Data quality control

API

Webhooks

Scheduler

Data Export

Parser

Replace text

Regex match

Append and prepend text

Strip HTML

Remove whitespaces

Remove column

Virtual column

Convert UNIX timestamp

Selectors
Web scraper has multiple selectors that can be used for different type
data extraction and for different interaction with the website. The
selectors can be divided in three groups:

Data extraction selectors for data extraction.

Link selectors for site navigation.
Element selectors for element selection that separate multiple
records

Data extraction selectors

Data extraction selectors simply return data from the selected element.
For example Text selector extracts text from selected element. These
selectors can be used as data extraction selectors:
Text selector
Link selector
Image selector
Table selector
Element attribute selector
HTML selector
Grouped selector

Link selectors
Link selectors extract URLs from links that can be later opened for data
extraction. For example if in a sitemap tree there is a Link selector that
has 3 child text selectors then the Web Scraper extract all urls with the
Link selector and then open each link and use those child data extraction
selectors to extract data. Of course a link selector might have Link
selectors as child selectors then these child Link selectors would be used
for further page navigation. These are currently available Link selectors:

Link selector

Element selectors
Element selectors are for element selection that contain multiple data
elements. For example an element selector might be used to select a list
of items in an e-commerce site. The selector will return each selected
element as a parent element to its child selectors. Element selectors child
selectors will extract data only within the element that the element
selector gave them. These are currently available Element selectors:

Element selector
Element scroll down selector
Element click selector

Selector configuration options

Each selector has configuration options. Here you can see the most
common ones. Configuration options that are specific to a selector are
described in selectors documentation.

selector - CSS selector that selects an element the selector will be

working on.
multiple - should be checked when multiple records (data rows) are
going to be extracted with this selector. Data extracted from two or
more selectors with multiple checked wont be merged in a single
record.
delay - delay before selector is being used.
parent selectors - configure parent selectors for this selector to make
the selector tree.
Note! A common mistake when using multiple configuration option is to
create two selectors alongside with multiple checked and expect that the
scraper will join selector values in pairs. For example if you selected
pagination links and navigation links these links couldn't be logically
joined in pairs. The correct way is to select a wrapper element with
Element selector and add data selectors as child selectors to the element
selector with multiple option not checked.

Selecting elements
Select tool
Web Scraper has a point and click select tool that makes selecting
elements accessible for all users. It can be opened by clicking on Select
in selector creation interface. It will highlight elements that it will select
on click in yellow and already selected elements will be highlighted in
red. Elements can be deselected by clicking on them again while selector
tool is still active.

Hotkeys
Hotkeys can be enabled by clicking on a select tool after opening it or by
selecting an element.

P: expend the selected selector to a parent selector.

C: change selected selector to a child selector. Can be used only if P
key has been used prior.
S: select the highlighted element. Useful for selecting elements that
change or change something on the page when clicked on.
Hold Shift: select multiple element groups.

Manual element selection

As we are always trying to improve the select tool to find the best CSS
selector for the selected elements, there are still situations where it is
required to manually specify a CSS selector. Some HTML and CSS
knowledge is required to write CSS selectors. You can find more info
about CSS selectors on CSS selector page.

Related videos
How to select elements without clicking on them
How to select elements that contain specific text
How to select elements that have a specific element
How to select elements that don’t contain specific text
How to select elements that don’t have a specific element