Does IronWebScraper offer a visual interface or is it code-only?

IronWebScraper is a C# library used for web scraping, primarily designed to be used programmatically through code. It does not offer a visual interface or GUI (Graphical User Interface) for setting up or running web scraping tasks. Users interact with IronWebScraper through C# code, where they define the logic for navigating web pages, selecting data to be scraped, and handling the extracted information.

Here's a basic example of how you might use IronWebScraper in a C# application:

using IronWebScraper;

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var scraper = new WebScraper();

        scraper.OnStart = (s) =>
        {
            s.LoggingLevel = WebScraper.LogLevel.All;
            s.Request("https://example.com", Parse);
        };

        scraper.OnResponse = (response) =>
        {
            // Handle the response, parse HTML, etc.
        };

        // Parse function to process web pages
        void Parse(Response response)
        {
            foreach (var title in response.Css("h1"))
            {
                Console.WriteLine(title.TextContentClean);
            }
        }

        // Start the scraper
        scraper.Start();
    }
}

In this example, OnStart is an action that is called when the scraping begins, setting up the initial request and specifying a parsing method. OnResponse is an action that is triggered when a web response is received. The Parse function is used to actually extract data from the response using CSS selectors.

If you're looking for a tool that provides a visual interface for web scraping, you might want to consider other options such as:

• Octoparse: A user-friendly web scraping tool that provides both a free desktop application with a visual interface and a cloud-based service.
• ParseHub: A visual web scraping tool that allows you to build scrapers using a point and click interface and run them in the cloud or locally.
• WebHarvy: A point-and-click web scraping software that is designed for non-programmers.

These tools offer a more approachable way to perform web scraping for users who are not comfortable writing code. They allow you to select elements visually and configure your scraper without writing any programming instructions. However, they may not offer the same level of flexibility and control as a code-based solution like IronWebScraper.