Overview

How to use the Grabber Scripts Editor to test grabber(s), options or customizations.

Introduction

You should already be familiar with Grabber Scripts and the Grabber Editor interface.

After completing this tutorial, you will be able to use the Grabber Editor to test grabber results, or the results of any options you choose on the User Options tab of the Grabber Editor.

You may use the same procedure to view the results of different grabbers even if you have not customized them, or to identify problems with grabbers when reporting issues. 

Select a Grabber

If you open the Grabber Editor using the Grabber Options button in In My Films Setup > Update Tab or AMCU > Import Movies Tab, it will automatically load your currently selected grabber.

If you use the Desktop Shortcut, or want to test another grabber, click the Browse button to select the grabber you wish to test.

Search page

Don't freak out. The Search page looks quite formidable, but it is actually quite easy to use.

The top options are the same as on the User Options tab, see Grabber Scripts Editor > Configuration Options

The bottom box is just a preview of the HTML source code for the current page loaded into the Editor. 

Select a Film

On the right you can see the Test Page section. You will start here.

1. Search box - Enter the name of a film to test
2. Search  - to find films that match your search criteria and preview the html source page for searching
3. Preview - to display of preview/list of search results that the grabber will find for the current film
   Note: As of v 6.0.0 the preview is the same as when matching films in AMCU Import.
4. Select match - click on the correct match for the film you wish to test
5. Use with Detail Page - when you are ready, press this button to go to the Details page to review all the fields/data grabbed by the script. 

Note:  Whenever you select a parameter, the resulting text should be highlighted in the html source code preview box at the bottom of the page.

Before you go to the Detail Page, you may wish to check some of the basic parameters especially if you did not get a correct match. 

Check Search Parameters

1. Parameter - from the drop down list, select one of the parameters that the grabber may use to select matching films: Title, Year, Director
2. Key Start - displays the grabber code to select the unique start position in the HTML source code of the data for that parameter.
3. Key Stop - displays the grabber code to select the unique stop position in the HTML source code of the data for that parameter.
4. Preview Parameter - press this button to see what actual data would display for the selected parameter
5. Find - if you are not getting correct results for the selected parameter you can enter a value in the Find box to search for it in the HTML source code and correct the Key Start/End code.

Once you are happy that the grabber is searching the website correctly, proceed to the Detail page to check what data is grabbed for each field or parameter in the grabber script.

Note: You can right-click a field for a context menu to copy text to the clipboard.

Detail Page

The Detail page looks much like the Search page above and functions in a very similar way.

However, now you may select a parameter that matches the field contents you wish to check.

When you select a parameter that uses Grabber options specified on the User Options tab, the Grabber Interface will also display the options selected . Example for Certification parameter:

1. Regex - since the Certification parameter uses options, the Key Start displays the Regex used to grab Certifications. 
2. Sub-page - as of v 6.0.0 the grabber code to access the sub-page where data for that parameter is grabbed
3. Countries - since the Certification parameter supports filtering by Country in the IMDb-Full grabber script, the 'poss. Countries' on the current web page for the movie are listed. Country will display the option selected for Certification on the User tab.

Note: You can right-click a field for a context menu to copy text to the clipboard.

Preview Full Grab

On the detail page you will also see the button for Preview Full Grab. Click this button to preview the actual results which the grabber will grab from the page:

Here you may scroll through the preview to view what data is grabbed for each AMC field.

Note the image size, which gives you a clear indication of the quality of the image.

To check the results of specific field mappings, scroll down to the MAPPED OUTPUT FIELDS section.  

For example, if you have mapped Tagline to the start of the Description field you can view the results.: 

Note at the start of (33) Description (mapped) you see the tagline "The dream is real".  In the above screenshot you can also see the results of (31) Translated Title (mapped) - where country=USA and limit=2 AKA titles were selected for this grabber.

  With a few simple steps you can really see what the grabber script does, even before you decide to use it.

What's Next

Once you have become familiar with the Grabber interface, you may wish to try customizing the actual parameter code for key start and end positions to grab more or different data.  Obviously some knowledge of HTML is helpful, as well as Regex expressions for more advanced parameters.  When you feel ready, you can proceed to Create a Grabber.

Related

• Grabber Script Editor