Tapicker v5.0.0 released 🎉👏

Welcome to the release of Tapicker v5.0.0. There are many updates in this version that we hope you'll like, some of the key highlights include:

• New recipe editor
• New execution engine
• Support custom arguments
• Support variable definition and reference
• Support conditions and branches
• Support random waiting time
• Support random loops and reverse loops
• Support extracting data from iframe
• Add more data transformers
• More efficient deduplication algorithm
• And more...

New recipe editor

One of the most important updates of Tapicker v5.0.0 is that we have designed a new recipe editor that allows you to create recipes by dragging and dropping, as easy as building blocks.

It provides many useful blocks that you can freely combine to build a powerful workflow with high customization and flexibility.

New execution engine

Another equally important thing is that we refactored the core engine and now supports start, pause, resume and stop operations, which is very useful for some time-consuming tasks.

For example, if you start a workflow and have to leave it for some reason, you can safely pause it or stop it directly.

Support custom arguments

We now support customizing parameters that require user input, which improves the applicability of recipes. This is a super useful feature that allows recipes to be created once and used in multiple places.

As shown below, you can create multiple parameters and then consume them where needed.

Suppose you create a recipe that can export twitter followers, and you want to customize the profile link every time you start the recipe.

To do this, you add a parameter (named Entry in this example).

This way you can customize it every time you start it.

Support variable definition and reference

Similar to custom parameters, you can also define multiple variables and then consume them where needed. The difference is that the data of variables comes from the page, while the parameters come from user input.

You can reference a variable by entering two curly braces {{

Support conditions and branches

Conditions allow recipes to handle data collection in various complex scenarios.

For example, we need to first determine the number of comments on twitter and then decide how to deal with it.

If there are no comments, return, otherwise, scroll the page and scrape the data.

Support random waiting time

You can set the wait time before each block is executed, it can be a range or fixed. When it is a range (for example: 1 - 5s), a random value will be generated from this range.

Support random loops and reverse loops

Through loops, you can perform batch repetitive tasks, which greatly improves efficiency. In some websites, robot access will be prevented, and random access can effectively avoid detection by the target website.

• Random - Randomize the execution order, such as: [3, 5, 2, 4, 1]
• Reverse - Reverse the execution order, such as: [5, 4, 3, 2, 1]

Support extracting data from iframe

Although this case is rare, once you encounter it there is nothing you can do about it. We can now easily extract data from iframes, no extra action is required on your part. It is no different from normal data extraction and is insensitive.

Add more data transformers

When we scrape data from a website, if the data contains unwanted content, we can process the data through a data transformer. For example: extract email address from text, etc.

More efficient deduplication algorithm

We have improved the efficiency of the deduplication algorithm. In data collection, it is particularly important to effectively prevent data duplication. It greatly saves your time checking data.

Conclusion

Due to limited space, there are still many thoughtful features that have not been introduced, waiting for you to discover. There is no doubt that Tapicker v5.0 is an important milestone. It is the transformation from a Web Scraper to Web Automation.

That's all. We continue to improve and strive to do better 💪.

Keep following us!