Tutorial 2: Scraping Movie Data (e.g., Rotten Tomatoes)

This tutorial demonstrates how to build a workflow that starts on a movie listing page (like Rotten Tomatoes), navigates to individual movie detail pages, and then extracts specific information such as titles, ratings, and synopses for each movie.

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Goal

To collect detailed information for multiple movies listed on a website. This involves:

1. Opening an initial movie listing page.
2. Finding links to individual movie detail pages.
3. Navigating to each movie detail page.
4. Extracting structured data (e.g., title, rating, synopsis, director, cast) from each detail page.

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Key Blocks Used

• Open Websites
• Find Links
• Follow Links
• Extract Data

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What You’ll Learn

• How to navigate from a general listing/category page to multiple individual detail pages.
• How to use Find Links to identify specific URLs and Follow Links to visit them.
• How to set up an Extract Data schema for information found on detail pages.
• A common pattern for “deep dive” data collection.

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Steps

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1. Create a New Workflow

• Navigate to your Jsonify Dashboard.
• Click the button sequence to create a new workflow: Create an empty workflow ➙ Extract.
  • This template will already include Open Websites and Extract Data. We will add Find Links and Follow Links manually.

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2. Configure Open Websites Block

• Select the Open Websites block.
• For this tutorial, we’ll use a Rotten Tomatoes page listing movies in theaters as an example. In the URL input field, add:
  • https://www.rottentomatoes.com/browse/movies_in_theaters
• Ensure the toggle switch next to the URL is ON.

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3. Add and Configure Find Links Block

• After opening the listing page, we need to find the links to individual movie pages.
• To add a new block:
  1. Look at the block categories at the top of the editor (e.g., Trigger, Input, Transform, Filter, Output).
  2. Select the Transform category.
  3. From the dropdown list of blocks that appears, select Find Links.
  4. Now, click the + icon on the canvas at the point where you want to add the block (i.e., after the Open Websites block). The Find Links block will be added and connected.
• Select the Find Links block to configure it.
  • What kind of links?: Enter a description like Find links to individual movie pages in the main list. You might add constraints like Links must contain '/m/' if you observe a pattern in Rotten Tomatoes movie URLs.

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4. Add and Configure Follow Links Block

• Once the links are found, the agent needs to visit each one.
• To add a new block:
  1. Look at the block categories at the top of the editor.
  2. Select the Input category.
  3. From the dropdown list, select Follow Links.
  4. Click the + icon on the canvas after the Find Links block. The Follow Links block will be added and connected.
• Select the Follow Links block to configure it.
  • Which links to follow?: Choose Follow each link. This will make the subsequent Extract Data block run for every movie page found.

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5. Configure Extract Data Block

• This block will now execute on each individual movie page that the Follow Links block navigates to.

• Select the Extract Data block (it should be after Follow Links).

• What information should we scrape from each URL?: Select A single item, as each movie page contains details for one movie.

• Define the attributes (fields) for each movie:

  NAME	EXAMPLE VALUE OR A LONGER DESCRIPTION
  movie_title	The main title of the movie.
  tomatometer	The Tomatometer score (percentage), e.g., 95%. Extract as text or just the number.
  audience_score	The Audience Score (percentage), e.g., 88%. Extract as text or just the number.
  synopsis	A brief summary or plot description of the movie.
  rating	The MPAA rating (e.g., PG-13, R).
  genre	Primary genre(s) of the movie, e.g., Action, Comedy.
  director	Name(s) of the director(s).
  release_date_theaters	The theatrical release date, e.g., Oct 20, 2023.

• Add additional instructions and guidance…:

  • You are on a movie detail page. Extract the specified information. If a field is not present, leave it empty.

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6. Run Your Workflow

• Click the Run manually button.
• The agent will:
  1. Open the Rotten Tomatoes movie listing page.
  2. Find all links to individual movie pages.
  3. For each movie link found: a. Navigate to the movie’s detail page. b. Extract the defined information (title, scores, synopsis, etc.).

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7. Check the Results

• You will be redirected to the current run’s page where results will populate.
• Once completed, click on “View as sheet”.
• You should see a table where each row represents a movie, and the columns contain the details you specified for extraction.

Congratulations! You’ve created a workflow that navigates from a list to detail pages and extracts structured data. This “deep dive” pattern is very common for many data collection tasks.