[HN Gopher] Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that can automate...
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Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that can automate any website
Author : dkthehuman
Score : 250 points
Date : 2021-11-17 15:16 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (browserflow.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (browserflow.app)
| anaskar wrote:
| This is awesome. Congratulations on the launch. I can see a
| number of use cases for Marketing, CS, and Sales orgs
| agumonkey wrote:
| Impressive work :) #jealous
| fender256 wrote:
| I would love it if this extension was made for Firefox!
| dkthehuman wrote:
| Hi HN,
|
| About 14 years ago, I fell in love with programming because it
| made me feel like a magician. I'd type in some incantations,
| click "Run", and voila! My lightning-powered thinking rock would
| do exactly as I commanded -- in my case, make a virtual robot
| named Karel move around the screen in my computer science lab.
|
| Nowadays, casting spells requires a bit more work. Most of our
| work happens inside complex web apps that each have their own
| custom spell books (APIs) -- assuming they even provide one at
| all.
|
| Let's take a task like managing your social media accounts.
| Suppose you want to reset your Twitter account and start from
| scratch. First step: Unfollow everyone. The problem is that you
| have hundreds of accounts to unfollow, and you don't exactly want
| to sit there all day clicking buttons.
|
| If you're not a programmer, your options are limited to what
| others have built. You can hand over your credentials to all
| kinds of third-party apps and extensions in the hopes of finding
| one that works. Good luck.
|
| If you're a programmer, you have more options. You have the power
| to cast spells. What if we used the official API?
|
| You can sign up for a developer account, get an API key, download
| a client library, read about how OAuth works for the hundredth
| time, and then start digging through the API to find out how to
| complete your task.
|
| That sounds tedious and creating a developer account for a one-
| off task feels like overkill. What if we simulated user actions
| in the browser instead?
|
| You can install Selenium/Puppeteer/Playwright, read through its
| documentation to learn how to navigate and click, open the web
| inspector to figure out the right CSS selectors, run into some
| race condition where the elements aren't loading in time,
| sprinkle in some waits, and puzzle over how to handle elements
| being added from the infinite scrolling list.
|
| That doesn't sounds too great either. Maybe it'd be faster to
| manually click those buttons after all...
|
| I built Browserflow to automate tasks like this where people end
| up wasting time doing what computers do better. I wanted a tool
| that makes it easy for anyone, regardless of their technical
| background, to automate any task on any website. It includes the
| convenience of features like automatically generating automation
| steps by recording your actions while having the flexibility of
| letting you tweak anything manually or write custom Javascript.
| (If you want to see how simple it is to automate the Twitter task
| above using Browserflow, here's the demo:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnsGTpcA-98)
|
| Building a browser automation tool from scratch and making it
| robust enough to handle all kinds of websites took much, much
| longer than I expected. After working on it as a solo developer
| for 1.5 years, I'm super excited to finally share this with you
| all. Whether you're a professional developer or a non-technical
| marketer, I hope Browserflow will make you feel like a magician
| on the Web.
|
| Would love to get your feedback!
| bspammer wrote:
| This is a really excellent sales pitch, you answered all my
| "why not just" questions upfront. The video makes this look
| very smooth to use, excited to try it out next time I have a
| need.
| sly010 wrote:
| Congrats, the demos look awesome! Having struggled with something
| like this in the past (for automated testing) I am always curious
| about how various solutions represent the "program" so its long
| term repeatable?
|
| I often had to manually add branching on certain conditions (i.e
| login) or waiting for certain conditions (elements appearing)
| before proceeding.
|
| I also often had to manually tweak selectors and even matches on
| html structurally (css selectors cannot select a parent element
| based on a matching content element).
|
| Then there are the webpacked react sites that scramble css class
| names that change all the time.
|
| Some of these things are super tedious to solve for even manually
| so I am just curious how no-code tools handle these?
| dkthehuman wrote:
| Browserflow is more low-code than it is no-code since it has
| support for control flow statements like "If", "Else", etc. as
| well as being able to execute arbitrary Javascript on the page.
| The no-code approach of simply recording a flow works fine in
| many cases, but there are a lot of escape hatches if the
| flexibility is needed (e.g. waiting for an element to appear).
|
| There's also support for a few unofficial pseudo-selectors
| (:contains and :has -- see
| https://docs.browserflow.app/guides/selectors#writing-
| your-o...) to make selecting elements more reliable.
|
| Hope that helps! Agreed that creating reliable automations for
| the Web is challenging and hopefully Browserflow will make it
| easier for many folks.
| toss1 wrote:
| Excellent work; I started the demo with usual jaded attitude, but
| then - WOW - nice - I'll have good uses for that!
|
| Can you drive actions from a spreadsheet or table? The workflow
| I'm thinking of is first do a run to gather data, next offline
| filter or select desired items from that data set, then finally
| use the processed data set to drive a series of actions on the
| selected items.
|
| Also, any chance there'll be a Firefox version?
| dkthehuman wrote:
| You definitely can drive actions from a spreadsheet -- it's one
| of the most common usage patterns.
|
| Here's a demo showing it in action:
| https://docs.browserflow.app/tutorials/tutorial-scrape-a-lis...
|
| (The demo shows scraping each URL but you can perform arbitrary
| actions for each row of the sheet.)
|
| As for Firefox, it's unfortunately not currently possible:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29256938
| xeromal wrote:
| So this is very specific, but I've been trying to automate
| clearing my linked in messages for a while and I just tried
| browserfow to no success. I tried using the selector and also
| grabbing css paths off random elements.
|
| Any idea how to debug?
| dkthehuman wrote:
| Come to the #help channel in the Browserflow Discord and we can
| work it out!
|
| Link to the Discord is here: https://docs.browserflow.app/
| catchmeifyoucan wrote:
| Beautiful UI. Hope this takes off. Love the simplicity of the
| design and the ease of use. If it could make writing my Cypress
| UI tests easier, that might be another adjacent problem to look
| into, by logging the recorded elements as code.
| dkthehuman wrote:
| Thanks! Right now you can use it for testing by throwing an
| error from the flow (using the Run Script command) if the
| result differs from what you're looking for (e.g. an element
| doesn't exist, some text doesn't match the expected output) and
| Browserflow will email you when the flow fails. It's currently
| not optimized for that use case though, so if it becomes
| popular, I'd probably look into adding more support for
| testing.
|
| I've thought about adding support for generating a self-
| contained bundle of Javascript code from the flow that anyone
| can self-host and run, but that hasn't been a priority for the
| current use cases. Will keep it in mind -- thanks for the
| suggestion.
| TavsiE9s wrote:
| Why would I need to signup if I only ever want to run local
| flows?
| vxNsr wrote:
| Just curious, why do you offer residential ips? My initial
| thoughts are reseller botting, but it honestly seems kinda slow
| for that, not to mention max rate of 1/min. So what else are
| residential ips good for?
| dkthehuman wrote:
| Yeah, Browserflow definitely wouldn't be able to compete with
| specialized bots for reselling in terms of speed.
|
| I added support for residential IPs to handle sites that employ
| aggressive bot detection, but it's in private beta and so far
| there hasn't been much of a demand for it. If it turns out that
| it's not really needed for the use cases people have, I might
| just remove the feature!
| tyingq wrote:
| >So what else are residential ips good for?
|
| Chances are if you've thought of something you could scrape
| that would offer a broadly popular, real tangible benefit, they
| employ anti-bot measures that don't like non-residential ips.
| debdut wrote:
| Damn dk! This is awesome I'm following you and browserflow
| sometime. This post should be on top for days straight atleast
| guys
| dkthehuman wrote:
| Thanks for following along -- I appreciate the support!
| moritonal wrote:
| Whilst nice, how is this going to handle the changing nature of
| the web? It's nice that it detects "lists" and such, but a few
| changes to CSS is going to trash that automation right?
|
| I'm also fairly sure you'll break (either directly, or on a
| user's behalf) a few EULA's that really specifically ban
| scraping.
| kreeben wrote:
| Didn't this case [0] set a precedence that "scraping is not
| against the law" irregardless of EULA?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn
| detuur wrote:
| This might be true in the USA, but the EU has a thing called
| database rights[0]. Essentially, any collection of data can
| under certain circumstances be protected under database
| rights, which prevents other parties from copying (parts of)
| it. This originally was created to protect such things as
| phone books and other directories, but when I was a student
| (I don't remember the context anymore), they specifically
| warned us that scraping certain websites would violate their
| database rights, and thus be illegal. So using scrapers in
| the EU is something you should be very careful with,
| especially if your business depends on it.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right
| moritonal wrote:
| So it was proven that it's not a criminal offence to scrap a
| website, but a website is still well within it's rights to
| ban you from doing so.
| wccrawford wrote:
| "using data that is publicly available"
|
| If the user is logged in, that data may not be publicly
| available, and the EULA would still apply.
| countvonbalzac wrote:
| Do you think this could be used for testing purposes as well, not
| just scraping?
| dkthehuman wrote:
| It'll work, though it's not optimized for that use case.
|
| Wrote more about it in this comment here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29256076
| defied wrote:
| For testing purposes, you can achieve similar results with
| Selenium IDE. You can export tests and upload these to (our
| website) https://testingbot.com - supports screenshots and
| scheduled runs.
| geoka9 wrote:
| Very nice! Just be careful, Twitter is pretty aggressive with
| banning accounts that use automation.
| butler14 wrote:
| I've dabbled with lots of RPA software but never settled on one,
| mostly due to poor UX or the need to write code. Will give this a
| whirl!
| mritchie712 wrote:
| Nice work! I've been trying a few similar tools. How do you
| handle auth (e.g. LinkedIn) when the work is running in the
| cloud?
| catchmeifyoucan wrote:
| I think in the video, he was getting the original cookies from
| the website, and reusing them in the cloud
| dkthehuman wrote:
| Thanks! Auth is handled when running in the cloud by adding the
| relevant cookies to the cloud flow.
| newman314 wrote:
| I'm going to try using this to update certs on my Brother
| printer. It is one of the few that I have been unable to
| automate/hack together something for LE cert rotation.
| jonshariat wrote:
| If this could take screenshots, I would signup in a heartbeat.
|
| Here is my need (and I've had this need my whole working career":
| What does production look like?
|
| If a tool could automate loggin in, browsing specific flows, take
| screenshots of every page, and add them to a folder of the day,
| it would invaluable.
| ukd1 wrote:
| You could also do most of this (except adding the screenshot to
| a folder, but you can get it via api if you need) and more with
| our free plan - https://www.rainforestqa.com/
| spython wrote:
| Sikuli http://sikulix.com/ could perhaps be helpful.
| RandomBookmarks wrote:
| Sikuli is good for desktop automation. For browser automation
| an extension based solution (such as this one) is easier to
| use.
| renatgabitov wrote:
| Jon, what's the main pain or goal with capturing a screenshot
| for every page that you visit?
|
| It's tricky to do on your machine, so that performance doesn't
| suffer. At the end of the day, all full-page PDF generators
| would have to scroll to the end of the page, which would make
| it really tough for you to browse around.
|
| A solution to this would be to just capture the URLs that you
| visit, and then do the screenshot generation in the cloud. The
| limitation is that none of your websites with logins would get
| captured.
|
| Local storage is another issue for Chrome Extensions. There is
| a limit to how much data that can be stored.
| dkthehuman wrote:
| You're in luck! Browserflow can take screenshots and save them
| to Google Drive every day. :)
|
| Take a look at the "Take Screenshot" command and feel free to
| message me on the Browserflow Discord if you need help.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > and save them to Google Drive
|
| No, thank you. Please offer a local save option.
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| Do you think you would buy this if it does? Seems pricing
| is high
| dkthehuman wrote:
| If you run the flow locally, it'll save locally.
|
| If you run the flow in the cloud, it'll need some place to
| persist it so I've chosen Google Drive to start. If there's
| enough demand, I'd be open to storing it on Browserflow's
| servers and providing an API to access the files but I'd
| want to make sure that's something enough customers want
| before sinking my time into it.
| soperj wrote:
| How much are you offering for this feature?
| RandomBookmarks wrote:
| Such a thing already exists. The ui.vision extension is
| roughly the same, but it runs locally (no cloud):
|
| https://ui.vision/rpa/docs/selenium-ide/capturescreenshot
| genev wrote:
| How about a few lines of python with selenium?
| kordlessagain wrote:
| It's more than a few and less than a bushel.
| WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote:
| This is excellent... Congrats and super useful!
|
| I will no longer write some pretty gnarly jQuery in console to do
| the same thing.
| cxr wrote:
| Prior art:
|
| "CoScripter" (2007)
| <https://blog.mozilla.org/labs/2007/09/coscripter/>
|
| "IBM Automates Firefox With CoScripter" (2007)
| <https://www.informationweek.com/software/ibm-automates-firef...>
|
| "Your personal assistant on the Web" (2010)
| <https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2010/10/your-personal-ass...>
|
| "Koala: Capture, Share, Automate, Personalize Business Processes
| on the Web" (2007) <https://ofb.net/~tlau/research/papers/koala-
| chi07.pdf>
|
| "CoScripter: Sharing 'How-to' Knowledge in the Enterprise" (2007)
| <https://ofb.net/~tlau/research/papers/leshed-group07.pdf>
|
| "Here's What I Did: Sharing and Reusing Web Activity with
| ActionShot" (2010)
| <https://ofb.net/~tlau/research/papers/p723-li.pdf>
|
| Demo: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKIex_XAxWw>
|
| Source code (bitrotted, of course):
| <https://github.com/jeffnichols-ibm/coscripter-extension>
| dxl32 wrote:
| Congrats on the launch DK!!!
| tyingq wrote:
| Too bad headless chrome seems uninterested in supporting browser
| extensions..."wontfix"
|
| https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=706008
|
| Otherwise, you could make a pretty neat self-hosted "cloud" of
| this nice looking scraper extension.
| dkthehuman wrote:
| I built Browserflow Cloud for that purpose ;)
|
| It was a lot of work translating the extension code to work
| with headless browsers, but it means you can deploy your flows
| to the cloud and have it run automatically!
| tyingq wrote:
| Yes, sure. Just that some use cases, like internal
| applications that aren't exposed to the internet, or dev
| instances of those that are, would be difficult.
| mritchie712 wrote:
| What type of app did you have in mind?
| fragmede wrote:
| automation/screenshotting of a bespoke internal ticketing
| system (aka not-Jira), but without needing to have my
| laptop on.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| Presumably using Chrome DevTools Protocol? Or maybe that new
| Recorder panel stuff [1] in DevTools has unlocked some new
| capabilities for Extensions?
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/JecelynYeen/status/1458089611004162060
| deedubaya wrote:
| Neat!
|
| I think your business plans are underpriced. You're saving human
| hours with increased accuracy, which probably is worth more than
| $25/month.
|
| edit: nevermind. Your annual pricing shows per-month pricing
| which is $299/month.
| seoulmetro wrote:
| I felt the entire opposite. There's no room to actually use the
| product well in a trial (free), and the next steps up are quite
| expensive.
| eulercoder wrote:
| Congratulations DK, this looks amazing!
|
| We are building similar tool at TexAu and would love to catch-up
| with you sometime this or next week!
|
| @iamvikeshtiwari on Twitter
| thih9 wrote:
| Congrats, looks great, especially the UX.
|
| Could you elaborate on cloud runs and cookies? E.g.:
|
| - How are the cookies obtained? I saw that in the video you
| clicked the "add" button at 1:36, how does this work and what
| happens behind the scenes?
|
| - How long do the cookies remain in use? Does the user have to
| refresh cookies manually at some point?
| dkthehuman wrote:
| When you click the add button, the extension grabs the cookies
| for the specified domain from your desktop browser and attaches
| it to the flow to be used when running in the cloud.
|
| The cookies are used for as long as the user keeps them in the
| cloud flow. (Browserflow doesn't try to be smart and
| automatically refresh the cookies on your behalf because there
| are scenarios like using multiple accounts in the same browser,
| etc.) Most major sites use quite long expiration dates for
| cookies (a year is fairly common) so there usually aren't
| issues with cookies becoming invalid for a while.
| [deleted]
| Cilvic wrote:
| i recall that browser would soon make it harder for
| extensions to grab cookies like that, does somebody know
| more?
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Are you aware of limitations around site support with this
| approach?
|
| Several years ago I implemented a similar feature just
| reversed - A remote machine logs a user in, then passes the
| cookies that result from login to an extension running in the
| user's browser, which drops them into the browser's cookie
| jar.
|
| Worked very nicely, right until you run it to log into a
| service like GMail.
|
| Then Google correctly notes that you're using the same cookie
| in two different locations, assumes you've been session-
| jacked (and you have, really - you just did it willingly),
| and locks _EVERYTHING_. It took a notarized copy of my
| drivers license before they let me back in.
| weka wrote:
| Beautiful UI. What's the framework -- React? Vue? Angular?
| dkthehuman wrote:
| I'm loving the nice comments about the UI because it's all good
| ol' Bootstrap. Tools in this category usually have pretty
| terrible design so I guess the bar is quite low. ;)
|
| I'm using React for the Javascript!
| mountainboy wrote:
| hmm, I installed extension, clicked on "Get Started", allowed
| permissions, and am then presented with a signup/signin page and
| no way to skip it.
|
| I just want to run some macros locally. Not interested in "cloud"
| anything unless its on a server that I control.
|
| Questions/comments:
|
| 1. Will local functionality work without signup?
|
| 2. If so, then please consider a "Get Started" flow that makes
| this clear and does not require signup before giving any
| instruction/usage.
| mountainboy wrote:
| hmm, I was going to experiment on this hackernews page, so I
| clicked on Extensions->BrowserFlow and it opened a window with
| a single button "Sign In". So it appears it does not work
| locally at all.
|
| Question: Is there a technical reason for this, or you just
| want to insist that everyone create an account for some reason?
|
| I do not see an obvious reason why macro recording and playback
| could not be performed purely locally. So I am skeptical that a
| server is needed, but always willing to learn and be
| astonished...
|
| I would think that even if (big if) a server is needed, it
| could be done anonymously without need to collect email and
| create an account.
|
| Anyway I am uninstalling the extension until such time as there
| is a local-only mode. too bad, from the demo it seems neat.
| RandomBookmarks wrote:
| I like the name. But how is this extension different from
| iMacros, Selenium IDE or UI.vision?
|
| These extensions are some well-known browser automation tools,
| each with > 100K users.
|
| Did you look at them and decided to do something different?
| dkthehuman wrote:
| Yup, I've tried dozens of tools in this category, and here are
| some of the main differentiators:
|
| - Ease of use: Most existing tools have pretty clunky UX and
| are hard to get started on
|
| - Reliability: I've had issues with many tools simply not
| working, especially when it comes to more complex sites
|
| - Cloud: Browserflow lets you deploy your flows to the cloud to
| run them on a schedule whereas many tools are local-only
|
| Hope that helps!
| technobabbler wrote:
| I was skeptical at first, but your comment convinced me to
| take a look. It really is much easier and cleaner, and having
| it run in the cloud is amazing!
|
| Nice job!
| debdut wrote:
| I've using iMacros, it's not as easy as this one
| nzach wrote:
| This looks really interesting!
|
| Do you have any plans to port it to also run on Firefox?
| dkthehuman wrote:
| I really wanted to make it run on Firefox as I do with all my
| other extensions (e.g.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22936742), but Firefox
| lacks the APIs that Chrome has for automating the browser. :'(
| detaro wrote:
| which APIs are those?
| dkthehuman wrote:
| https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/debu
| g...
| detaro wrote:
| interesting, thanks!
| capitainenemo wrote:
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1316741 if
| you want to vote for this. Has been stalled for a long
| time.
| mountainboy wrote:
| like so many mozilla issues.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| It's impressive. What's been the biggest challenge building it so
| far?
| slugiscool99 wrote:
| Really great job with this. Definitely fills a need
| gandalfff wrote:
| I'm a speech therapist who does teletherapy. I routinely fill out
| a lot of web forms. I've already created one automation that will
| save me time, and I have ideas for several more automations.
| Thank you so much for making this!
| dkthehuman wrote:
| Oh man, this makes me super happy to hear. Enjoy, and feel free
| to reach out either by email (support@browserflow.app) or on
| the Discord if you need any help with your automations!
| rafaelturk wrote:
| Neat. Love it.
| tmcneal wrote:
| Congrats on the launch DK! It's awesome to see how polished
| you've made this.
| dkthehuman wrote:
| Thanks Todd! Reflect has been a big inspiration for how smooth
| the user experience could be. Happy to see us both on the front
| page today! :)
| hnrodey wrote:
| This is so slick. I think I'll give it a try. Thanks!
| renatgabitov wrote:
| DK, congrats on the launch. You are onto something with data
| extraction. I like that you allow to correct the selectors, so
| that the data can be extracted more accurately, and typing.
|
| I found the UI slight challenging because of a popup window that
| opens. Resizing is tricky. Overlay would make is so much easier.
|
| Our team at Bardeen.ai has built a workflow automation tool. We
| also have a scraper to extract data. But our full automation
| engine (similar to Zapier/Integromat) allows to tap into the full
| power of web apps. Like creating a new Google Sheet / Airtable /
| Notion with the scraped data and then triggering follow up
| actions.
|
| If you are curious, here is a "live build" that I did for the
| Twitter --> Airtable use case.
| https://www.bardeen.ai/posts/scrape-twitter
|
| Jon mentioned in the other thread automated screenshots. We get
| screenshots of all of our dashboards from Google Analytics +
| Posthog sent to our Slack daily.
| https://www.bardeen.ai/playbooks/send-website-screenshots-in...
|
| Either way, great job there! Love seeing new automation projects
| pop up.
|
| P.S. - I saw there is an "input" action. Can I feed your
| automation tool a spreadsheet of data and have it fill out form?
| (one per row)
| eulercoder wrote:
| Hey Renat,
|
| Bardeen looks super look, we are also building something very
| similar but very much focused on Web Automation, you can build
| cross platform automations on TexAu - https://texau.app
|
| I'm thinking we should integrate with Bardeen and it will be
| open up so many more possibilities
|
| ~ Vikesh
| skrowl wrote:
| Sounds similar to Microsoft Power Automate, though Power Automate
| works with browsers other than Chrome.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| that is a very well-made presentation, congrats
| Drblessing wrote:
| This is amazing!
|
| I'm excited to see if this will remain available long-term or
| websites will try to figure out ways to block it, and the limit
| to data scraping from one script, for example if a twitter
| account had 1 mil followers could it do all of them in day. I'm
| going to try it out!
| dkthehuman wrote:
| One of the major benefits of Browserflow automating your normal
| desktop browser (instead of creating a separate browser
| instance) is that it's indistinguishable from you using the
| site directly.
|
| Of course, that doesn't stop websites from rate limiting you if
| you try to do too much too quickly. In general, I'd recommend
| being conservative and automating what you think a normal
| person would be capable of doing manually.
| mmmmkay wrote:
| this is dope! I've been thinking about building something this
| for a few months now. Glad to see that I don't have to anymore!
| :D
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Really neat, that's the kind of stuff I always wanted someone to
| build. I think a marketplace of workflows would be a great next
| step, so that you can have someone else maintaining the flows.
|
| I build tons of scraper and things that pretend to be browser
| (handcoded, not recorded from the browser - but lighter than
| spinning up a real browser) and the harder bit is keeping the
| flows maintained. Some websites are particularly annoying to work
| with because of random captchas jumping in your face but it's
| something you can handle by coding support for the captcha in the
| flow and presenting a real user the captcha.
|
| One problem of logging in the cloud is IP checks. You may be
| asked to confirm.
|
| If you want to look into this issues I'd recommend scraping
| yandex for dealing with captchas being thrown in your face and
| authed google or facebook for IP restrictions, weird
| authentication requests.
|
| Again, I think a marketplace could outsource these problems to a
| community of developers maintaining flows.
|
| Security could be another concern, but you always have the option
| of running things locally.
| dkthehuman wrote:
| For sure! I'll definitely be exploring the marketplace idea.
| Currently, you can share flows and import flows that others
| have shared, but there isn't (yet) a nice way to discover ones
| others have made or charge for flows you've made.
|
| Maintaining flows as sites change is definitely a drawback for
| any scraping solution, so I built features like generating
| selectors by pointing and clicking to make it as easy as
| possible.
|
| Browserflow Cloud has built-in support for rotating proxies and
| solving CAPTCHAs to get around the issues you mentioned.
| (They're currently in private beta.)
| reeddavid wrote:
| Looks great, I'll give it a try for my next scraping project. My
| favorite of all these types of tools was kimonolabs
| (http://kimonolabs.com) before they were acquired and shut down.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Cool. This reminds me of AppleScript. I miss those days. I'm
| surprised GNOME still doesn't have something that easy.
| asebold wrote:
| Very helpful for automating hiding "topics" on Twitter!
| renatgabitov wrote:
| Can you please elaborate what you mean?
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