Native Web Scraping with JavaScript
Some of my most favorite moments, when working with technology, are when you see the result of a few lines of code do what used to take hours and hours of work. Seeing the fruits of knowledge labor which replaces a lot of manual labor. It's glorious!
The example I'm mentally referencing is any time you need to extract some content from a web page and it's literally SITTING RIGHT THERE in front of your face and you end up using your precious time doing the good old copy and paste.
Every day there are SO many mistakes made by human error because of duplicate entry that if the data is in digital format you're almost always better off just pulling out what already exists.
So, how can this be done easily within FileMaker? Well, it may be the situation where the web page is ALREADY including the code you need to simply extract what you're wanting to get. The trick is understanding how you can use that code and moving beyond that point if it isn't already there.
In this video, I walk you through all the details and all the understanding necessary to web scrap most any web page and do it with the native tools provided by FileMaker 19 and higher. While it is possible with versions prior to FileMaker 19, the new FileMaker.PerformScript function makes things so much easier.
Comments
Strange
In your demo in some record Eval Javascript works, sometimes Execute Javascript. Check your syntax it says.
Enable Safari 'Inspect Element' for WebViewers
Excellent technique Matt, one I'm spending a good chunk of time exploring - thanks. This is just the job to automate/semi-automate a couple of my more time-consuming routines and spark ideas for more web integration. I do hope IE is dropped from FileMaker on Windows soon. I work in both environments but most of my end users are Windows clients, which is a blocker for many JS integrations.
I couldn't find the script reference to turn on 'Inspect Element' debugging tool so for anyone looking for it, this article gives you the terminal command:
https://blog.beezwax.net/2020/05/26/how-to-enable-webkit-and-javascript-...
Filemaker 19 Cheap POS
Pouvez-vous m'indiquer comment faire ou acheter un simple POS avec inventaire des produits
Can you tell me how to do it or buy a simple POS with product inventory
Thank
Jacques Gauthier