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screen-scraper can be run in three different modes, allowing for flexibility in how you'd like it to operate within your environment.
First, the screen-scraper workbench provides a graphical interface that allows you to designate URL's of files you want to mine data from, specific data points you want extracted, and scripts to handle logic and data manipulation. The workbench also provides a proxy server that will automatically record pages as you surf, saving you from having to worry about things like cookies and HTTP headers. Once you've set up how you want sites to be scraped using the workbench you can invoke it from the command line or while screen-scraper is running in server mode.
screen-scraper can be invoked from a command prompt in DOS, Unix/Linux, or Mac OS X. This not only allows screen-scraper to be run in a non-graphical context, but also facilitates scheduled scrapes so that information can be extracted at periodic intervals.
Finally, screen-scraper can be run in server mode, which allows you to invoke it from external applications. When running in server mode screen-scraper will function much like a database server such as Oracle or mySQL. You connect to it from something like a .NET, PHP, or Java application via a driver, set parameters, tell it to capture the data, then make use of the extracted data in your own code.
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