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.
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 onto 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.
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. |
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.
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.
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
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
Parser Test
This tab is designed for debugging scrapers. Debug mode is available. Learn more...
Status Bar
The status bar contains the following elements:
- 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 toParsing
. - Reflects the current number of tasks. From left to right: the number of executing tasks, the total number of tasks (working or stopped).
- Provides proxy information:
- Number of live proxies.
- Total loaded.
- Shows the number of involved threads.
- Appears if there is a new version available for A-Parser. Clicking on it will open the
Update A-Parser
tab. - Link to the website of A-Parser.