Webscraping using iMacros

The noted Diamonds dataset in the ggplot2 package of R is actually culled from the website http://www.diamondse.info/diamond-prices.asp

However it has ~55000 diamonds, while the whole Diamonds search engine has almost ten times that number. Using iMacros – a Google Chrome Plugin, we can scrape that data (or almost any data). The iMacros chrome plugin is available at https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cplklnmnlbnpmjogncfgfijoopmnlemp while notes on coding are at http://wiki.imacros.net

Imacros makes coding as easy as recording macro and the code is automatcially generated for whatever actions you do. You can set parameters to extract only specific parts of the website, and code can be run into a loop (of 9999 times!)

Here is the iMacros code-Note you need to navigate to the web site http://www.diamondse.info/diamond-prices.asp before running it

VERSION BUILD=5100505 RECORDER=CR
FRAME F=1
SET !EXTRACT_TEST_POPUP NO
SET !ERRORIGNORE YES
TAG POS=6 TYPE=TABLE ATTR=TXT:* EXTRACT=TXT
TAG POS=1 TYPE=DIV ATTR=CLASS:paginate_enabled_next
SAVEAS TYPE=EXTRACT FOLDER=* FILE=test+3

and voila- all the diamonds you need to analyze!

The returning data can be read using the standard delimiter data munging in the language of SAS or R.

Description

Automate your web browser. Record and replay repetitious work

If you encounter any problems with iMacros for Chrome, please let us know in our Chrome user forum at http://forum.iopus.com/viewforum.php?f=21

Our forum is also the best place for new feature suggestions :-)
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iMacros was designed to automate the most repetitious tasks on the web. If there’s an activity you have to do repeatedly, just record it in iMacros. The next time you need to do it, the entire macro will run at the click of a button! With iMacros, you can quickly and easily fill out web forms, remember passwords, create a webmail notifier, and more. You can keep the macros on your computer for your own use, use them within bookmark sync / Xmarks or share them with others by embedding them on your homepage, blog, company Intranet or any social bookmarking service as bookmarklet. The uses are limited only by your imagination!

Popular uses are as web macro recorder, form filler on steroids and highly-secure password manager (256-bit AES encryption).