Step 2

Finding Data Pattern

Data patterns are used for extracting data from pages. To search for data patterns, turn on the highlight mode for selected items by clicking on the Page Work button. Now clicking on the page will highlight selected items. Click on the Data Pattern wizard button. Select the Simple Iterator pattern. This pattern will return an array of items to be extracted from the page. The root item selection dialog will appear:

Selecting a root item restricts the range to be searched for the items. This is necessary when a page contains different arrays of data. Here is the best way to select a root item. Select an item that must appear in the result. Next, keep clicking on the Outer Tag button until the root item border covers all data being sought. Then click Next; that will open the fields creation dialog:

Select a field on the page and then click Add Node. The added field will appear on the fields list. You can edit its name and the required attribute, which indicates whether the field must appear on the page or not. When you are done with all fields, click Next and then click Find Patterns. Wait until the search is complete.

The selected nodes will be highlighted on the page. Click Next. The extracted data will be displayed in the window.

Verify them and then click Next. Enter the desired name and description if necessary. To verify a pattern, you can turn on the automatic pattern highlighting by clicking on the Auto Highlight Pattern button in the Project view toolbar. Now select the pattern in the Project view. If the pattern has performed properly, the found items will be highlighted on the page (make sure the selected items highlighting is enabled to enable highlighting for selected items.)

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