Settings

Overview

Most of the general settings for screen-scraper are available through the workbench settings window. There are a handful of settings that are rarely used, so we don't provide a way to adjust them in the workbench. These properties can be edited manually in the screen-scraper.properties file in screen-scraper's resources/conf directory. You can edit it in your favorite text editor.

If running either the Basic Edition or Professional Edition note that when you alter the file you should do so when screen-scraper is not running. It won't get the new settings until the application restarts, and if you edit while it's running it may overwrite your changes.

If running the Enterprise Edition you have two options for reloading the screen-scraper.properties file while screen-scraper is running in server mode.

• From the Settings button in the upper-right corner of the Web Interface.
• Via the REST Interface "Reload Settings" call.

Notable Settings not available in the Workbench

• AllowUnstableWindowsFeatures: Earlier editions of screen-scraper included features that were specific to working with Windows and Internet Explorer. This included allowing for scripting in JScript, Perl, and VBScript. These features were very prone to bugs and so discontinued. They are still available, though not advisably so, if you change this setting to true.
• DatabasePort: The port used to load the objects. If you have multiple instances of screen-scraper on the same machine then you will want to use different database ports so that objects created in one instance don't bleed over to other instances.
  

  If you want to run multiple instances of screen-scraper on a single machine we advise that you modify and/or add several properties in the properties file (not just this one).

• DisplayBreakpointWindowOutsideOfWorkbench: Allow a breakpoint window to open even when screen-scraper is running in server mode. The window is only visible on the machine that is running screen-scraper. If this setting is false or not listed, breakpoint method calls are changed to logVariables instead of opening the window.
• EnableWebServer: This takes a value of true or false, and defaults to true. In some cases for security reasons you may not want to run screen-scraper's built-in web server. Setting this value to false will disable the SOAP and RSS functionality in screen-scraper.
• MaxScrapeableSessionsToLoad: How many scraping sessions should be listed in the Run/Running Tab of the web interface. This is to cut down on the amount of memory being allocated to this feature. It defaults to 50. Note that once the limit is reached the entries in the Run/Running Tab will be removed, as well as the corresponding scraping session log files found in screen-scraper's "log" folder.
• MaxScrapingSessionLogFileSize: The largest a log file can get. This can help with logs that are starting to eat too much memory.
• Nickname: This value may be set to whatever you'd like. In cases where you have multiple instances of screen-scraper installed on a single machine, setting this property on each instance can help you to distinguish between them. It will show up in the title bar of the workbench.
• SaveLargeFields: Whether request and response details should be stored in the database. It defaults to false to save memory. If you set it to true for a specific task then you will want to change it back when you are done to avoid the bloating of your database.
• SpawnSeparateDatabaseProcess: You can use true or false for this one, and it will default to true. Normally when screen-scraper runs it spawns a separate process for its database (which holds scraping sessions and such). This has a number of advantages, but in one particular instance you may not want it to happen. If you're running screen-scraper as a server on a Windows box and you log out Windows will kill the database process, even though screen-scraper's server is still running. To avoid this problem simply set this property to false.
• WebInterfaceUser: The username which can be used to login to the web interface (enterprise edition) if the accessing IP is not in the allowed IPs list. If this property is not present or has an empty value, login from unauthorized IPs will not be permitted
• WebInterfacePassword: The password which can be used to login to the web interface (enterprise edition) if the accessing IP is not in the allowed IPs list. If this property is not present or has an empty value, login from unauthorized IPs will not be permitted. Note the web interface doesn't use SSL, so this password will not be transmitted securely (don't use something that is used anywhere else)
• WebServerShutdownPort: The port used to shutdown screen-scraper connections to other processes. With multiple instances it is best to set this to be different for each instance so that you are not closing an instance other than the one that you mean to close.