Browse AI has an alternative solution to the Chrome extension called Robot Studio. The key difference? No need for a browser extension, therefore you can use it across various browsers other than Chrome! Read more about the differences.
1) Training a Robot
Let's take a look at how to train a robot in Robot Studio (it's quick and easy).
Click on "Start Training Robot"
Enter the URL you would like to scrape then click on Start Training Robot.
Choose "Use Robot Studio"
Select the option that says Use Robot Studio.
Welcome to Robot Studio
You might notice that things look a little different than our Chrome extension experience (but still familiar).
How to capture data
On the right side, click on "Capture Text" and you will see two options:
1) From a list: this option enables you to select a list of items to extract
2) Just text: this option is for extracting text that's not part of a list
Let's capture a list
When you hover a list of items, you will see a dotted outline. When it looks correct to you, click in order to select the data point from each list item.
Recommended Dataset
We have a help article that goes into more detail about the recommended dataset feature, but the gist is that when you select a list your robot will scan it in order to provide you with suggested data points (complete with list name and labeled data columns).
(Manually) select your data points
If you choose to do it manually, hover over the items you'd like to extract, then click to select them.
When done, click Confirm or press enter
Label your data points
For each of the data points you selected, give it a label.
QUICK TIP: you can press enter after each one, to move to the next item.
Review your output data
Now it's time to check the data preview and do a few things:
1. Give your list a name
2. Review the extracted data to make sure it's accurate
3. Define the maximum number of rows to extract
4. Select the pagination type
5. Save your captured list
Let's capture more text
We've extracted a list of items. Now, let's extract a piece of text from the page. In this case, it's the page title.
NOTE
We captured text to show that you're not limited to capturing just one list from the page. You can also get other text/lists in the same recording, but you're not required to do so.
Save captured text and finish recording
That is the last of the data we're going to extract from this page, so let's save the captured text then finish recording this robot.
Give your robot a name & review the data
Let's give our robot a descriptive name and take a look at what was extracted.
After reviewing the data
At the very bottom of the screen, you will see the following options:
Yes, looks good: if everything checks out, approve your robot
No, let me re-train the robot: if something is amiss, you can try recording again
No, report an issue: if you're having problems, you can contact our customer success team
Delete this robot: if you'd like to scrap the whole robot
2) Making changes while recording
With Robot Studio, while recording your robot, you can see make changes to what's being captured.
Remove a data point
If you've captured something and would like to remove it, you can do so from the sidebar. Hover over each of the items and click on the trash can icon to delete that data point.
Let's delete the Link data field:
It's no longer in our data preview table:
Remove a list
From that Output Data Preview table, we can remove an entire list. Hover over the trash can icon under the list name and click on it:
You will see a popup asking you to confirm that you'd like to delete the whole captured list.
CAUTION: There is no way to undo the deletion of the list so make sure you want to delete it before proceeding with this.
3) Capturing a screenshot
In addition to text, you can also have your robot take a screenshot of the website. In the right sidebar, click on Capture Screenshot then choose from several options:
Selections: specify which part(s) of the page
Entire Page: get a screenshot of the whole webpage
Visible Part: get a screenshot of what's visible, without scrolling up or down
Here we choose Selections then specify which part of the page to get a screenshot of.
Confirm screenshot in data preview
You can look at the Output Data Preview table to confirm that a screenshot will be captured.
Delete the screenshot
As with the options we saw earlier for deleting, you can delete the screenshot as well from the Output Data Preview table:
