screen-scraper FAQ
General Non-Technical
Questions regarding general screen-scraper purposes, editions, versions, etc.
- How do I correct the error message, "Sorry, your registration is invalid" when I try to register screen-scraper?
- How does screen-scraper licensing work?
- How do I register my copy of screen-scraper?
- I'd like to have an offline copy of your documentation. Could you provide me with one?
- What are the differences between the three editions of screen-scraper?
- For the Professional and Enterprise editions of screen-scraper what upgrades am I entitled to?
General Technical
Questions regarding how screen-scraper works or how to get it to do something.
- How do I upgrade from version 6.x to 7.0?
- Why do I get "HTML Truncated" on the Last Response tab?
- Can I put a session variable in an extractor pattern to limit the results?
- My sub-extractor pattern only gets one instance of my data. How can I get all of the data?
- I'd like to scrape data from a mainframe/tn3270 application. Can screen-scraper handle this?
- My web site is hosted on a shared server (virtual hosting). Can I use screen-scraper with it?
- How do I set up screen-scraper on Lunix/Unix/BSD?
- Can screen-scraper extract information from PDF files?
- Can screen-scraper extract information from non-HTML objects such as Java applets, ActiveX controls or Adobe Flash movies?
- Can screen-scraper be scheduled to scrape sites on a periodic basis?
- How much memory and what type of CPU is recommended for screen-scraper?
- Does screen-scraper follow redirects?
- Can screen-scraper work with sites that use HTTPS?
- The web site I'd like to scrape uses cookies, can screen-scraper handle this?
- I'd like to scrape information from a web site that requires me to log in first. Can screen-scraper handle this?
Tips & Suggestions
How to setup some special features, best practices, etc.
- Why do I keep getting an OutOfMemoryError in screen-scraper's "log/error.log" file
- How can I run screen-scraper via a batch file when running on Microsoft Windows Server?
- I'm unable to start screen-scraper in server mode. How can I troubleshoot this?
- Screen-scraper won't open, with the message "The JVM could not be started." How can I fix this?
- Any recommendations on how to handle projects that involve large numbers of scraping sessions?
- How do I send dynamic POST parameters in screen-scraper?
- I'm trying to scrape an HTML form that requires the user to type in text shown in an image. Can screen-scraper handle this?
- How do I extract data from two tables that are basically identical in structure?
- Will screen-scraper notify me if the site I'm scraping changes?
- How do I make a backup of the work I've done in screen-scraper?
- I'm running screen-scraper in a machine that isn't connected to the Internet. How do I transfer my screen-scraper license to it?
- I'm running screen-scraper in a GUI-less environment. How do I update it to the latest version?
- How can I optimize screen-scraper's performance?
- screen-scraper is stripping out white space when I don't want it to. How do I stop it from doing this?
- How do I insert the data screen-scraper extracts into a database?
- Can I run multiple instances of screen-scraper on the same machine?
Troubleshooting
Questions where, trying to do something, you have run into a problem. Now what do you do to fix it?
- How do I resolve connection issues when trying to scrape a site that uses SSL?
- My update was cancelled prematurely. How do I restore screen-scraper?
- I've just upgraded to an alpha version of screen-scraper, but it has bugs. How to I downgrade back to a more stable version?
- I'm getting an exception that says something like "Too many files open." How do I fix this?
- I've changed the ports, but I still get an error message about port binding. Why?
- How do I update a script whose "Overwrite this script on import" box is unchecked when screen-scraper is on a GUI-less server?
- How do I transfer my scraping sessions and other objects from one machine to another?
- When I export my scraping session I get a zero-byte file. What am I doing wrong?
- When I try to connect to the screen-scraper server from my application it refuses connections. How do I fix this?
- screen-scraper is telling me that it can't bind to certain ports. How do I fix this?
- screen-scraper is telling me that it can't connect to its database or that the database is corrupted. How do I fix this?
- The site I'm trying to scrape is telling me that cookies need to be enabled. How to I fix this?
- How do I handle international character encoding issues?
- How do I update to the latest alpha release?
- When using screen-scraper's proxy server my browser hangs or I don't see anything in my proxy session. How do I fix this?
- At times screen-scraper seems to stop working and my computer starts beeping. What's wrong?
- I get an error like this when I run a script: "undefined variable or class name: dataSet". What's wrong?
- What character sets does screen-scraper support?