Interface Overview

Structure

The A-Parser interface consists of three parts:

• Menu (on the left)
• Status bar (on the right)
• Current tab (at the bottom)

Home and News

The tab is divided into two areas:

• A-Parser News (on the left), which includes:
  • up-to-date information on updates
  • collections of recipes and articles
  • video tutorials
• Latest forum posts (on the right)

Quick Task

This tab allows you to run a simple task without using the editor.

Task Editor

A full-featured task editor. Allows you to fine-tune scrapers, apply filters, use regular expressions, save the unification database, format queries and results, and has a number of other features. For more information on task settings, see the Task Editor section.

Preset Export

Preset Import

Tooltips

When you hover over certain fields (scraper, result format, query format, etc.), tooltips appear.

Searching in Dropdown Lists

To use search in a dropdown list, click on the text inside it, clear it (CTRL+A, DELETE\BACKSPACE), and start typing. If several matches are found, you can navigate through them using the arrows. When the item is found, press ENTER.

note

Using search, you cannot select more than one item. To do this, you need to manually scroll through the list and select the desired items.

Scrapers

In this area, you can Add Scraper (or scrapers) that will be used in the task (adding multiple scrapers), add a Query Builder, Results Builder, change the Result Format, override Scraper Options, select a preset, and run a Task Test.

Result Format

The button allows you to return the result format to the default.
Click on to open a multiline input field where line breaks are available.

Scraper Options

Scraper settings are saved in presets - sets of saved settings.

For all settings, there is a default preset - default. It cannot be changed. All changes must be saved in presets with new names.

Option Override

Add Override - quick override of settings for the scraper. This option can be added directly in the Task Editor. The list of settings shows the default values.

note

If the option is in bold, it means that it has already been overridden in the preset.

Queries

The list of queries can be specified in two ways: loaded from a file or written in the field.

Queries from File

Queries from Text

Results

In the Results field of the task editor, you can see the options that regulate the recording of results in files.

Options

Additional options of the task editor.

Tasks Queue

Demonstration of interaction with the task queue interface. Switching between active and completed tasks, switching between pages.

Task Card. The card displays basic information about the task.

• Settings
  • Scrapers. This section displays the scrapers involved in the task.
  • Time added. The time when the task was added to the queue.
  • Queries. A comma-separated list of queries or a relative path (from /aparser/queries/) to the query file.
  • Stream config. The name of the stream configuration used in the task.
  • Results file. The name of the results file.
• Status
  • Time modified (last). The time when the task was last modified.
  • Completed/total queries. The total number of queries and the number of completed queries.
  • Failed queries. The number of failed queries.
  • Unique/total results.
  • Status.
  • Active threads.
  • Waiting threads.
  • Current speed/average speed.
  • Current query.

The possible task statuses and their descriptions are presented in the table below.

Status	Description
starting	The task is starting.
working	The task is in progress.
pausing	The task is being paused.
paused	The task is paused.
stopping	The task is being stopped.
stopped	The task has been stopped.

note

What is the difference between pausing and stopping a task? A paused task continues to occupy an active slot, while a stopped task does not. Execution can be resumed after both stopping and pausing.

note

How to configure the number of displayed tasks in the queue? Go to the ⚙ Settings tab, then General settings, and in the Tasks per page section, specify the desired number. Click 💾 Save to apply the changes.

Scheduler

The scheduler allows you to schedule tasks that require periodic execution. Learn more...

Logs Viewer

Viewing the log for a specific task. A separate log is kept for each thread.

Viewing logs is mainly used for debugging tasks to analyze the progress of task execution and see where and when errors occur in the task. For example, if a task is not working and results are not being collected, then you need to view the task logs and see why there are no results.

info

To view task logs, you must enable the Log option before adding the task. If you add a task without enabling this option, viewing the logs will be impossible.

Proxy Checker

Editing proxy checkers and statistics of their work. Learn more...

Tools

Includes several tabs:

• Template testing - a tool for creating and testing templates
• JavaScript editor - allows you to add your own JS functions and execute them from the template engine
• Update A-Parser - check for updates and automatically update to the latest version
• Maintenance - stop and restart the parser server, as well as the debugging window
• Regular Expression Builder - allows you to create and test regular expressions

Learn more...

Settings

A-Parser contains the following groups of settings:

• General settings - basic program settings: language, password, update parameters, number of active tasks
• Stream settings - stream and unification method settings for tasks
• Scraper settings - the ability to configure each individual scraper
• Proxy checker settings - number of threads and all settings for the proxy checker
• Additional settings - optional settings for advanced users

Learn more...

Parser Test

This tab is designed for debugging scrapers. Debug mode is available. Learn more...

Status Bar

The status bar contains the following elements:

1. A-Parser status. By default, it is set to No tasks. This means that A-Parser is in waiting mode. As soon as at least one task is added, the status will change to Parsing.
2. Reflects the current number of tasks. From left to right: the number of executing tasks, the total number of tasks (working or stopped).
3. Provides proxy information:
   1. Number of live proxies.
   2. Total loaded.
4. Shows the number of involved threads.
5. Appears if there is a new version available for A-Parser. Clicking on it will open the Update A-Parser tab.
6. Link to the website of A-Parser.