A web scraping/[RPA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotic_process_automation) solution for ease of use, maintenance and (soon™) deployment. It uses an [XML](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML) based [DSL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-specific_language) which both defines the scraping process as well as the structure of the returned data. It compares favorably to [uipath](https://www.uipath.com/learning/video-tutorials/workflow-automation-uipath-studio), [Blue Prism ALM](https://bpdocs.blueprism.com/hub-interact/4-3/en-us/alm/alm-process-definitions.htm?tocpath=Plugins%20and%20Tools%7CAutomation%20Lifecycle%20Management%20(ALM)%7CALM%20%E2%80%93%20Process%20definitions%7C_____0), [Kapow(Now Kofax RPA)](https://www.kofax.com/products/rpa) and [apify](https://sdk.apify.com/). These solutions make the work of building and maintaining scrapers infinitely easier than directly using a primary scraping solution(like [playwright](https://playwright.dev/), [puppeteer](https://github.com/puppeteer/puppeteer), [jsdom](https://github.com/jsdom/jsdom), [cheerio](https://www.npmjs.com/package/cheerio), [selenium](https://www.selenium.dev/), [windmill](https://getwindmill.com/), [beautifulsoup](https://pypi.org/project/beautifulsoup4/) or others).
| `automaton` definitions can be used in whatever context they are needed: from the command line, your own code *or* from a GUI (Soon™). | |||||
In Code
|
CLI```bash npm install -g automaton-cli auto --help ``` |
GUI[TBD] | |||
| The automaton DSL is centered around 3 actions which navigate and populate the returned dataset. Many attributes are common to all elements, and most common use cases are covered. |
go
A progression from page to page, either by loading a url, submitting a form or clicking a UI element requires either `url` or `form`
`type` accepts ```json```, ```application/json``` or ```form```
Some engines that use the browser will only submit using the form configuration on the page and ignore the `method` and `type` options.
```xml
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set
Either use a variable to set a target input on a form or set a variable using an [xpath](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/XPath) or [regex](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide/Regular_Expressions). Lists are extracted by putting `set`s inside another `set`
```xml
|
emit
emit a value to the return and optionally post that value to a remote url
```xml
|
| First you'll want to understand [xpath](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPath) (and probably [DOM](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Document_Object_Model), [regex](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide/Regular_Expressions) and [css selectors](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/CSS/Building_blocks/Selectors)) before we proceed, as most of the selectors in a good definition are xpath which is as general as possible. Once you're done with that, the `auto` command( get by installing the [`CLI`](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@open-automaton/automaton-cli)) has a few operations we'll be using. |
1) Save the form urlYou want to scrape the *state* of the DOM once the page is loaded, but if you use a tool like `CURL` you'll only get the *transfer state* of the page, which is probably not useful. `auto fetch` pulls the state of the DOM out of a running browser and displays that HTML. ```bash auto fetch https://domain.com/path/ > page.html ``` |
2) Target the formThe first thing you might do against the HTML you've captured is pull all the forms out of the page, like this: ```bash auto xpath "//form" page.html ``` |
3) Target the inputs
Assuming you've identified the form name you are targeting as `my-form-name`, you then want to get all the inputs out of it with something like:
```bash
auto xpath-form-inputs "//form[@name='my-form-name']" page.html
```
Then you need to write selectors for the inputs that need to be set (all of them in the case of cheerio, but otherwise the browser abstraction usually handles those that are prefilled)
```xml
|
4) Submit the filled form
you just need to target the form element with:
```xml
|
5) Save the form results urlHere you'll need to manually use your browser go to the submitted page and save the HTML by opening the inspector, then copying the HTML from the root element, then pasting it into a file. |
6) Save result set groups
Now we need to look for rows with something like:
```bash
auto xpath "//ul|//ol|//tbody" page.html
```
Once you settle on a selector for the correct element add a selector in the definition:
```xml
|
7) Save result set fields
Last we need to looks for individual fields using something like:
```bash
auto xpath "//li|//tr" page_fragment.html
```
Once you settle on a selector for the correct element add a selector in the definition:
```xml
|
| From this you should be able to construct a primitive scrape definition(See the examples below for more concrete instruction). Once you have this definition you can do sample scrapes with: ```bash auto scrape my-definition.auto.xml --data '{"JSON":"data"}' #TODO on CLI, but already working in the API call options ``` |
8 - ∞) Wait, it's suddenly broken!!The most frustrating thing about scrapers is, because they are tied to the structural representation of the presentation, which is designed to change, scrapers will inevitably break. While this is frustrating, using the provided tools on fresh fetches of the pages in question will quickly highlight what's failing. Usually: 1. The url has changed, requiring an update to the definition, 2. The page structure has changed requiring 1 or more selectors to be rewritten, 3. The page has changed their delivery architecture, requiring you to use a more expensive engine (computationally: cheerio < jsdom < puppeteer, playwright). |
Automaton definitions are published as useable [nodejs](https://nodejs.org/en/) [npm](https://npmjs.com/) modules, though making and maintaining them does not **require** any javascript. You'll need your own npm credentials to publish. |
1) Create the repositoryOnce in the directory let's run ```bash auto init ../some/path/some-site-register.auto ``` If a definition is not provided, a blank one will be initialized |
2) Configure the repositoryyou'll need to import the engine you want to use by default: ```bash # we are choosing to default to JSDOM npm install @open-automaton/jsdom-mining-engine ``` then add an entry to `package.json` for the default engine ```json { "defaultAutomatonEngine" : "@open-automaton/jsdom-mining-engine" } ``` |
3) Publish the repositorypublishing is the standard: ```bash npm publish ``` Before publishing, please consider updating the README to describe your incoming data requirements. |
Once it's all set up, you have a bunch of features, out of the box. ### Testing ```bash npm run test ``` ### Scraping you can run your definition with ```bash npm run scrape '{"JSON":"data"}' ``` |
you can reference the definition directly (in parent projects) at: ```js let xmlPath = require('some-site-register.auto').xml; ``` which is short for: ```js path.merge( require.resolve('some-site-register.auto'), 'src', 'some-site-register.auto.xml' ) // ./node_modules/some-site-register.auto/src/some-site-register.auto.xml ``` The top level `Automaton.scrape()` function knows how to transform `some-site-register.auto` into that, so you can just use the shorthand there.