Here are answers to some Frequently Asked Questions about openkapow, robots and RoboMaker. If you do not find the answers to your questions here then please take a look in the forums.
Basics
Developing robots
Publishing robots
Running robots
If your questions are not answered by this FAQ then please take a look in the forums!
Basics
What is a robot?
An openkapow robot is a program created in RoboMaker. A robot interacts with web sites and automates actions on these sites that a person can do by hand in a normal browser (such as Internet Explorer or Firefox). This includes navigating web sites by clicking on links and submitting forms, extracting data from a site and much more. The behaviour of a robot can be affected by input values (for example the username and password to use to log in to a password protected site) and the robot produces an output (for example the current rate of a specific stock). There are three types of robots - RSS robots, REST robots and Web Clip robots. To start developing your own robots it is recommended that you start with the "Hello World" - My First Robot tutorial.
What is RoboMaker?
RoboMaker
is the visual development environment used to create robots. In
RoboMaker a robot is created by putting together steps and configuring
those steps. This is done using a point-and-click interface that
includes a browser view that allows the developer to see the page the
robot interacts with in the same way as if it was in a normal browser
such as Internet Explorer or Firefox. RoboMaker is a client program
that is downloaded and run on the developers local machine. When a
robot is complete it can be published to openkapow.com from within
RoboMaker. Download RoboMaker here.
Why should I register at openkapow?
If
you are a registered user of the openkapow community you can publish
your own robots, download robots other users have made (to see how they
work or improve them) and participate in the forums. Register now to become a part of the openkapow community.
An
RSS robot is a robot that creates an RSS feed or an Atom feed. The RSS
feed can then be read using a special RSS Reader, a browser that
supports RSS or a mail program that can read RSS. An RSS robot is run
on a schedule defined by the robot developer. For example it can be run
once an hour, which means that once an hour the feed will be updated
with the new information the robot might have found. See Wikipedia for more information about RSS. To start developing your own RSS robots it is recommended that you start with the tutorial Creating a basic RSS robot that reads from Digg.
What is REST robot?
A REST robot is a robot that is run as a REST service. This means that it is called using a normal URL with all the input values as parameters (for example http://service.openkapow.com/tutorial/firstlinkgooglesearch?searchText=kapow). The robot then outputs the result of it's work in for example XML, HTML or JSON. REST robots are normally used to create an API-like interaction with a web site and the REST robots are usually called from within a program (written in for example PHP, Ruby on Rails, C# or Java). This makes REST robots the perfect base for mashups. See Wikipedia for more information about REST. To start developing your own REST robots it is recommended that you start with the tutorial Creating a basic REST robot that searches Google.
What is a Web Clip robot?
A Web Clip is a reuse of a sites user interface. Using a Web Clip robot it is possible to take a complete site, a part of a site, or just a part of a page and use it outside the original site. Inside the robot it is possible to change the HTML, the stylesheets etc of the original site. Web Clip robots are many times used to take one piece of functionality from one web site and display it on another. To start developing your own Web Clip robots it is recommended that you start with the tutorial Creating a basic Web Clip robot that clips Wired News.
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Developing robots
What are steps?
Each
step is one small piece of functionality (like clicking on a link or
extracting the title of a page) and a robot is built up by several
steps. The functionality of each step can be configured (for example to
define what link to click on). Detailed information about all the steps
available can be found in the help available inside RoboMaker.
What is a Tag Finder?
A Tag Finder is a part of the configuration of steps. It defines what HTML tag the step should interact with, for example what link to click on. The Tag Finders can be specified in a number of ways, for example using the DOM path of the HTML tag or using regular expressions (see the RoboMaker help for more information).
What type of robot should I choose?
That of course depends heavily what you want to do, what site you will interact with and how you want to use the robot, but here are some general pointers:
- If you want to use a specific piece of functionality from a web site (for example searching stock symbols) and you just want to include this functionality on your own site then a Web Clip robot is usually a good choice.
- If you want to use a web sites functionality or data from within your own programs then a REST robot is usually a good choice.
- If you want to get information from a site and read this information using an RSS Reader than an RSS robot is usually a good choice.
To get an idea of what can be done with the different types of robots and what robot type fits your purposes you can take a look in the
Robot Gallery to see what others have done.
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Publishing robots
How do I publish my robot?
When you are done developing your robot in RoboMaker and you are ready to publish it so that you can run then choose "Publish" from the File menu in RoboMaker. Once a robot is published you and everyone else can execute it. All registered users can also download the robot to see how it works and maybe do their own version (don't worry, they can't overwrite your version).
What should I call my robot?
You can call your robot whatever you want as long as it is a unique name, but it is recommended that everyone follows the same format so that robots are easier to find. When you are publishing your robot to openkapow.com from within RoboMaker you define both the Title and the URL of the robot. The Title should be something descriptive like "Add Todo to Basecamp REST". The URL should contain your username and a good URL name of the robot (sometimes shorter than the title, always without spaces and other special characters), for example "Andreas/addtodotobasecamprest". When the robot then is published on openkapow.com I can run the robot using the URL
http://service.openkapow.com/Andreas/addtodotobasecamprest.rest.
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Running robots
How do I run a robot?
You run a robot by calling an URL that is specific for each robot, this URL is set when the robot is published on openkapow.com. If it is your own robot you can find the URL in RoboMaker in "Robot Configurations" found in the "File" menu, choose the tab "openkapow" in the "Robot Configurations" popup. For all published robots you can find the URL by clicking the "Try It" button on the robots page in the Robot Gallery. An example of such an URL is http://service.openkapow.com/tutorial/firstlinkgooglesearch.rest. Either a robot can be run from the web page that is shown when you load the robots URL into a browser, or the URL can be called directly from a RSS Reader (for RSS robots) or programs (for REST robots).
How do I get input to robots?
Assuming the robot you want to run acctually takes some input values then you can see exactly what input values it needs by trying the robot (use the "Try It" button found in the Robot Gallery). When you know what input values the robot needs you can call the robot with the input values as GET parameters in the URL. For example if a robot needs the input value "searchText" you can call it with the parameter ?searchText=kapow (http://service.openkapow.com/tutorial/firstlinkgooglesearch?searchText=kapow).
What output formats does a robot have?
What output formats that are available for a robot depends what type of robot it is:
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