Lesson 5: Get data

Now that your first scraping task is built and fully tested. You can go ahead and run the task to extract some real data.

1. Two ways to get data

2. Start a run

3. Check your data

4. Export your data

1. Two ways to get data

There are two ways you can run the task:

• Run on your device (also known as local extraction)
• Run in the Cloud (also known as Cloud extraction)

If you run a task on your device, you will need to have the Octoparse App open during the extraction process. There will be an extraction window running on your PC, and you can watch the data getting extracted and wait for it to complete.

On the other hand, when you run a task in the Cloud, the task will be run on the Octoparse Cloud Platform, which means you can shut off the Octoparse App or even your computer and come back for your data when the job is done. Tasks running in the Cloud generally run 4x to 12x faster compared to local extractions. Depending on your project requirements, you can always choose a plan that works for you. 

2. Start a run

Once you are done building a task, you can click the "Run" button to start a run. 

Alternatively, you can also access the task on the Dashboard and use Run/Stop buttons to run/stop a task. 

3. Check your data

Now that your run is completed, you can go ahead and check your data.

Go to the Dashboard and find your task. Hover over the number of lines scraped and click on it to check the data scraped from the latest run. Click All Data to check the data scraped from all the runs.

Or, you can also check all the data by clicking the ... icon on the Dashboard, select View data, and then choose if you'd like to view Cloud data or Local data.  

4. Export your data

If the data looks good to go, you can export the data directly by clicking on Export Data in the lower right corner of the Data View tab. Octoparse supports exporting data to Excel, CSV or HTML files or to a database.

>> Lesson 6: Schedule regular runs

Author: Brian

Editor: Yina