Input and output

Input

Often, your robot will require human-supplied input data in order to iterate through a list of URLs, perform search queries, or fill out forms.

To facilitate this, there are two tools available:

• In-editor input fields
• Run-specific input fields

The in-editor tools allow specification of input fields and testing-specific input values, while run-specific input fields allow bulk uploading of input data for specific executions.

Output

Output is the result of a robot's work. How a robot handles extracted information is defined in the robot editor with output fields, while actual, usable results are accessed from the execution page.

How do I use output fields?

Output fields are the definition of what data your robot generates as results. These are defined in the Outputs tab. Once output fields have been defined, your robot can store results during execution.

How do I format my output?

Often, when extracting information from a website, the output contains garbled characters, HTML mark-up, or unwanted characters. To address this, every text extraction step type includes an Output formatting feature.

Each output format has a certain effect on the original output, which you can see live in the Example output text area. To test your output formats with other input, simply edit the Example input text area.

Output formats currently available include:

• Number Ceiling: Only works for numbers – rounds a decimal number up to nearest integer.

• Number Floor: Only works for numbers – rounds a decimal number down to nearest integer.

• Number Round: Only works for numbers – rounds a decimal number to its nearest integer.

• Format: Wraps the text in a format – replacing %1 with the existing text. e.g., my format %1 becomes my format rocks for the output value rocks.

• If Matches: If the output matches the given regular expression – then replace it with the given text. Optionally you can add %1 to the resulting text to insert the existing matched text.

• If Not Matches: If the output does not match the given regular expression – then replace it with the given text. Optionally you can add %1 to the resulting text to insert the existing unmatched text.

• Lowercase: Make all characters in the output lowercase.

• Uppercase: Make all characters in the output uppercase.

• Trim: Removes whitespace (line breaks and spaces) from the beginning and end of the output.

• Remove HTML: Removes all HTML tags and encoding. e.g., <b>Rock &amp; Roll</b> becomes Rock & Roll.

• Match: Remove everything but the first match in the output of the given regular expression. E.g., USD 1.000 becomes 1.000 when matched with the regular expression [1-9\.].

• Replace: Replaces one text with another. Uses regular expressions.

• Prefix: Adds the given prefix to the text.

• Suffix: Adds the given suffix to the text.

• Date Format: Interprets and reformats a date according to the input and output formats. The format used is from Moment.js – which you can read more about here

The input format describes the structure of the extracted value (as of date).

The output format describes the structure of value that will be saved as the final output in the results section of the robot. Below you will find some examples:

Additional reading resources

Regular Expressions examples:
http://www.regular-expressions.info/examples.html

Online Testing tool for Regular Expressions:
https://regex101.com/#javascript

Where are my results?

As you test your robot in the editor, you can see the results under the Results tab.

When you are satisfied with your robot, create a run for it to upload real-world, working input data, execute your robot, and collect the resulting data.