Scraping CAPTCHA forms (you know, those HTML forms with the wavy text)

Alert screen-scraper yipa posted an excellent question to our forum this morning: One of the pages I want to scrape is behind a login with image verification (i.e., you need to enter some text generated in an image to log in). Is there a way to work around this? Maybe something like SS load the … Read moreScraping CAPTCHA forms (you know, those HTML forms with the wavy text)

Version 2.7.2.17a of screen-scraper available

Our to-do list is empty! This version contains all of the bug fixes and features we’ve had planned for the next version of screen-scraper. I suppose you could consider it to be more of a beta, or maybe even a release candidate. There really isn’t anything earth-shatteringly new in this version over 2.7.1.16a–mostly just bug … Read moreVersion 2.7.2.17a of screen-scraper available

Using screen-scraper to automatically test embedded devices

A while back I flew out to Huntsville, AL to work with a government contractor company on automating the testing of embedded devices. To this day I’m not entirely sure what these little machines did, but they each had a web interface that needed testing (much like that of a wireless router, if you’ve worked … Read moreUsing screen-scraper to automatically test embedded devices

Version 2.7.2.13a of screen-scraper available

Come ‘n get it! Several clean-ups in this one, as well as a few new features. screen-scraper will now back up its database automatically. It’s rare, but we still get reports occasionally of corrupted screen-scraper databases (which can often mean loss of work). We use a database called Hypersonic, which can be amazingly fragile if … Read moreVersion 2.7.2.13a of screen-scraper available