Enter text is an action to simulate the behavior of entering text on a web page. For example, we can input login credentials on the page to scrape the data behind a login. Also, if we have a list of keywords to search on websites, we can use this feature to input the keywords into the search box.
In this tutorial, we'll be learning how to use the Enter text feature to input text(s) in different scenarios.
1. Enter a single keyword into the text box
Entering a text or keyword in Octoparse is easy. With the built-in browser, you can interact with the web page by simply pointing and clicking, just like you do using any normal browser.
Click on the login box on the page and select Enter text in the Tips panel
Input text and then Confirm
You will see an Enter Text step being created in the workflow
2. Enter multiple keywords into a search box
If you have a series of pre-defined and specific text values, you can add them to the "Text list" to create a loop search action. Octoparse will automatically enter every word in the list into the search box, one word at a time.
Click on the search box and choose Enter Text
Click Enter text in loop
Input a list of keywords, one search term per line
Click Confirm to save
Loop Item will be created in the workflow.
Note:
If your task fails to input the rest of the keywords after the first one, please drag Go to Webpage inside Loop Item.
The text list should not exceed 10K lines.
3. Enter two keywords into different text boxes
If there are multiple text boxes and you want to input different keywords to them accordingly, for example, input username and password to a website, you can follow the steps below.
Select the first text box
Choose Enter text
Select the second text box
Input the username/password to Textbox 1/Textbox 2
Click Confirm to save
4. Enter multiple lists of keywords into different text boxes correspondingly
If you have multiple lists of keywords and want to input them into different text boxes correspondingly, Octoparse can also help you with that. For example, you want to log in to a website with different username and password combinations to get different information.
Select the first text box
Choose Enter text
Select the second text box
Click Enter text in loop
Insert the username and password combination
Separate username and password with a ";", and input one combination per line
Note: If you have more than two lists, you can continue to select the third or more text boxes. When inserting the text, just use “;” to separate the three or more texts like string1;string2;string3...