Comments on: Screen Scraping Made Easy http://www.belshe.com/2006/09/05/screen-scraping-made-easy/ Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:49:11 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: alan http://www.belshe.com/2006/09/05/screen-scraping-made-easy/comment-page-1/#comment-4570 alan Thu, 17 May 2007 16:17:13 +0000 http://www.belshe.com/wp/?p=192#comment-4570 Screen scraping is futile? Come on, then what about all the thousands of companies that use it, including big ones like Oracle, Time Warner, and Seagate? Not to mention big universities like Stanford, Columbia, and Berkeley? Want to get all the data from a few public online databases? Get product information from a shopping site? Compare insurance or loans from different sources? Archive web pages? Automate complex web tasks involving multiple forms? So on and so forth? Screen scraping. Sure, it's not very elegant in most cases. Web services would be better many times, but the fact is that many times screen scraping is the best solution for the problem. Futile? Come on, now that's just foolish. Some educational reading: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_scraping www.screen-scraper.com www.fetch.com Screen scraping is futile? Come on, then what about all the thousands of companies that use it, including big ones like Oracle, Time Warner, and Seagate? Not to mention big universities like Stanford, Columbia, and Berkeley?

Want to get all the data from a few public online databases? Get product information from a shopping site? Compare insurance or loans from different sources? Archive web pages? Automate complex web tasks involving multiple forms? So on and so forth? Screen scraping.

Sure, it’s not very elegant in most cases. Web services would be better many times, but the fact is that many times screen scraping is the best solution for the problem. Futile? Come on, now that’s just foolish.

Some educational reading:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_scraping
http://www.screen-scraper.com
http://www.fetch.com

]]>