Multi-page form scraping
Hi all
I'm new to screen-scraping and before I spend hours going through the tutorials I just wanted to know if screen-scraper can do what I need it to do.
I'm looking at scraping a 5 or 6 page form, from a car website which contains postcode lookups, car registration lookups and various validation amongst other things. I need it to look as though the form is actually on our site, so we can pass the customers over to the scraped site at the end of the process for the final quote.
is this possible?
thanks
Multi-page form scraping
swampdeer,
You're correct. Your hosting provider will need to allow screen-scraper to be installed on the server.
-Scott
Multi-page form scraping
Thanks for the reply Scott, I understand a bit more now after reading your link.
I guess it means running screen-scraper on our webhost's server, which they may not allow.
I'll have to use an alternative method until we can rent our own dedicated server for hosting.
Multi-page form scraping
swampdeer,
Yes, screen-scraper is capable of accomplishing what you describe. screen-scraper's role will only be a part of what would end up being a larger application. Please see our documentation on how screen-scraper is able to interact with server-side code such as PHP, ASP, JSP, etc.
http://www.screen-scraper.com/support/docs/running_screenscraper_as_a_server.php
Please keep in mind that any delay in responding to your user with the desired data will depend somewhat on the efficiency of screen-scraper (which is usually a small factor) but also depends heavily on the responsiveness of the server from which you are scraping the data (which can vary).
Please let us know if you have any additional questions.
Thank you,
Scott