Web Scraping - Scraping Facebook That Required Login with Octoparse

Thursday, January 12, 2017 10:29 PM

Graphic tutorial

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When the target data is behind authentication, it is still possible to access the data with Octoparse. Simply text input the login information (username and password) then click on the "sign-in" button to log in. In this tutorial, we will show you how to extract data behind a login, as well as how to use cookies to optimize the workflow of your task.

1) Enter login information to sign in

2) Use cookies to optimize the workflow

1) Enter login information to sign in

Click on the textbox for username input on the web page

Select "Enter text" from Tips

Input the username into the textbox, click "Confirm", and the username entered is automatically populated to the username textbox on the web page

Click on "Continue" and select "Click button" from the Tips panel

(Set up proper AJAX timeout as needed.)

Follow the same steps to enter the password
Click the "Sign In" button on the page and select "Click button" from the Tips panel

Octoparse has now logged into the website successfully!

Tip!

Clear cookies

As all websites handle cookies differently, to ensure the task workflow will work consistently, you may want to start with the login steps every time the task is executed. To do this, you can clear any cookies saved before the login page is loaded. This way, the target website will always "forget" you and take you to the login page on which you can enter all the login information.

Click Go to Web Page and select Options
Select Clear cache before opening the web page
Click Apply to save

2) Use cookies to optimize the workflow

1. Save cookies

Most of the time, you can optimize the workflow by saving the cookies in the task after login. This way, Octoparse will send the saved cookies to the website during loading, and there's a good chance the website will remember "you" and skip the login steps.

Switch to Browser mode by clicking on the top right

You can log in to the website just like what you do on a regular browser.
After login, go to the "Options" settings of the "Go to web page" action, tick "Use Cookie" and click "Use cookie from the current page".

Click "Apply" to save the settings
Now the web page is supposed to "remember" the login and skip the login steps when the crawler is running next time.

Tip!

1. A saved cookie is only effective before it gets expired

Cookies come in many different forms. Some have a specific expiration time, others expire immediately as the browser is closed. In Octoparse, the saved cookie will no longer work when it gets expired. To resolve this, you will need to go through the login steps once again under browser mode in order to obtain and save the updated cookie.

2. Your password is well-protected

In Octoparse, when you enter your password, it is only accessible on your own account. When a task is exported, the password saved in the task gets removed automatically.
Any login information saved will be removed from your account permanently as soon as the task is deleted.

3. Entering captcha manually while running local extraction

If you encounter a captcha, you can manually input the captcha when running the task locally. Cloud Extraction doesn’t support dealing with Captcha.

If you need any help with task configuration or data collection, submit a ticket to our support team! We'll get back to you within 24 hours.