Browser Configuration

Overview

screen-scraper's proxy server is a valuable tool for manipulating server interactions and building scrapes. In order for the proxy server to gather information from a browser, the browser must be configured to make requests to the server. As many people have never done this before we have provided instructions on how to setup some common browsers to use a proxy server. It is a simple process but one that might be a little foreign.

When you are done developing your sessions you will likely want to reset the proxy settings back to their normal state. This is not required so long as the proxy server is still running but once the proxy server is stopped the proxy settings will cause configured browsers to stop working until the settings are reset.

Alternate Proxy

We've also added support to import proxy sessions from Charles proxy. You can proxy using Charles and then export the data to a "JSON Session File" and import that into screen-scraper. This can be a helpful alternative for proxying SSL sites.

Choosing a Proxy Browser

Though any browser can be used to record transactions on the proxy server, we have found that some tend to experience less problems, complications, ans issues compared to others. On that note you might want to take some time to think about what browser you want to use when proxying a site.

If you are experiencing issues with transactions being recorded as errors, these can often be the results of browser plug-ins/add-ons. We have found that Internet Explorer is especially prone to them where as Opera tends to have the fewest issues.