Apply Pattern to Last Scraped Data no longer works right
Hi,
I've upgraded to Screen Scraper Professional 3.0.65a and now the "Apply Pattern to Last Scraped Data" button doesn't show you the variable for just the specific sub-extractor pattern. It seems like it's showing you all the variables for the entire main extractor pattern.
Is there an updated version that fixes this? Or is this the first time you've heard of this problem?
Thanks,
Brendan
Apply Pattern to Last Scraped Data no longer works right
Brendan,
You know that a specific sub-extractor pattern is working because normally each token (or variable) is named something unique. Repeating token names in different extractor pattern text is not advisable but I think I understand your reasoning behind why you are doing that.
The reason you're now seeing all of the matches to all of the tokens is an unintended result of the internal consolidation of code within screen-scraper.
We are considering adding an option to the way the results are displayed to include a layout much like the one you describe. However, that may not be available until a few releases from now. And, unfortunately, reverting the display back to how it was before with displaying only the result associated with the button you press is enough of a task that it may be even longer before that is implemented.
I apologize for the inconvenience this causes.
-Scott
Apply Pattern to Last Scraped Data no longer works right
So how do you know that a specific sub-extractor pattern is doing the right thing when you have multiple sub-extractor patterns populating the same variable name? One of our sites we crawl has many different ways of displaying the product price. So we have to take into consideration all the different styles of html to extract out the price. But the value ends up in the same variable.
In previous versions you could click the Apply button to see how a single extractor pattern was working. But now you don't know if it's the one you're working on or any of the others in the set that's populating the variable.
Also, it would be way more convenient to see 2 columns, one with the variable name and one with the value, rather than a column for each variable. E.g. vertical instead of horizontal.
The version that isn't working the same as before is the latest alpha version 3.0.65a. The one that is working is version 3.0 (the release version).
Apply Pattern to Last Scraped Data no longer works right
Brendan,
That's actually normal behavior for when you're using the special ~@DATARECORD@~ token in the main pattern text area. So, in the case of the sub-extractor patterns, when you click on ANY of the "Apply Pattern to Last Scraped Data" buttons screen-scraper will display the matches it's able to make for ALL of the patterns -- including the tokens in the main extractor pattern text area. This also means that if it does not make a match, the pattern (and the tokens contained therein) will NOT show up as one of the columns in the DataSet table.
Do I understand your situation and does this make sense or am I missing something still? What version were you at before you upgraded?
Also, we recommend that you use regular expressions as much as possible (we use the built-in samples more than any custom ones).
-Scott
Apply Pattern to Last Scraped Data no longer works right
I'm not actually using any regex in these patterns. When I reverted back to a previous version of Screen Scraper, the Apply button worked fine again. The problem seems to be that it's showing me all the values for all the variables within the entire set of sub-extractor patterns. Not just the values for the variables within the one sub-extractor pattern that I'm clicking on.
Apply Pattern to Last Scraped Data no longer works right
Brendan,
This is the first we've heard of this.
It sounds like what you're describing is that the one sub-extractor pattern is not longer matching. Can you verify that any regex that you previously had set for that extractor pattern carried over from your previous version to 3.0.65a? Also, could you double-check that the HTML your matching against hasn't changed? Are you able to modify your pattern to match as though it's your first time creating it?
Please let us know.
Thanks,
Scott