Support > Forums > OpenBots Studio > Data Scrapping without using selenium.

Data Scrapping without using selenium.

Nalin Nishant

  • Reporter
  • Calender Icon July 02,2023 at 8:15 PM

hello community! we are excitedly exploring the capabilties of openbots, and i am currently working on extracting each item from an amazon search page using a specific method. Let me explain the process in a more refined manner.

Initially, i utilized a loop to iterate over a fixed number of items on the page. within the loop i selected the item dynamically using xpath.

Sample Dynamic selector for Xpath - "/html/body/div[5]/div[5]/div[2]/div/div[2]/ul/li["+var+"]/div/div[2]/div[3]"

However the method i used require selenium, which necessitates downgrading the browser. unfortunately, this is against our policy. Therefore, i am seeking an alternative approach to extarct item from an amazon search page without relying on selenium.

At present, we are actively evaluating openbots.

This forum has 314 topics, 681 replies, and was last updated 18 days ago by Support Agent

Nataly Alvarado...

  • Participant
  • Calender Icon July 03,2023 at 1:00 AM

Hi Nalin Nishant,

For most use cases, we recommend using the Native Browser commands over Selenium, as the product team will continue to build and improve on the Native Browser commands for web interaction, and it is not dependent on the browser version. ​ Since the Native Browser commands communicate through the OpenBots extension, it opens more opportunities to our development team to build on top of these commands and add more support. Most of the features within Selenium are also present in Native Browser, except for the commands exclusive to Selenium like Execute Script and Switch Browser Frame. Moreover, Native Browser commands provide more tab functionality like the ability to open, activate, close and refresh a tab. As well as the ability to attach to an existing web session, indicate manual or simulated interaction, send keys to a specific field.

Native Browser commands are used to create the browser session (Edge, Chrome or Firefox), the desktop commands are used to interact with the elements within that session. We offer a Native Browser recorder to spy the elements, and create dynamic selectors. On the other hand, we also offer the Native Browser Legacy commands, which use xpath as input. ​ I am attaching a extension installation and usage guide. ​ Also, you can see examples on how to use these commands by checking the Studio Library -> RPA Challenge (find an example for Native Browser and Native Browser Legacy). To run the automation, remember to update the vInputsPath variable to point to your local library path.

You are not authorized to reply, please click here to login and add your reply to this topic.