Listextractor help

Part A: Introduction

Listextract helps you to get certain amount words after specified keywords from text files and saved web pages in your disks . Listextractor also can strip HTML tags from web pages. The words that are after your specified key words can be extracted and saved to a text file. They can be imported into any database, such as Access. Listextractor can be used for the direct marketing, research and medium clipper.

Listextractor is ease of use and user friendly. It not only can save results in a database format but also key words that you specified for search can be retreat, reedit and reuse.

With Listextractor, each file you process has a unique identity and is never missed up. Each word that you extracted can be clearly indicated from its correspondent file.

For getting information this program produces a text file (it can be imported into database, the delimiter is tab) in the directory that the user selected. For striping the tags the program produces a set of text files, each name consists of the corresponding pages’ name and its extension (for example "Helloasp.txt"), then these text files are saved in the directory user had chosen before the process started.

The user is allowed to try the full version of the program in processing 200 files. Then the user needs to get a password for permanent using.

To register the program, after getting the password, press "Register" button on the start form. To try the program, just press the "OK" button.

The program has very friendly interface. If you are confused by a button, you just put the mouse arrow on it, after a while there will come up with a piece of message about it. If you put the mouse arrow on the list boxes on main form, the file name will come up to you. Try it, you will be very clear.

To contact us, please refer to the contact details on the start form. To visit our web site, just click the web address on the start form.

The program has very strong mechanism of error proofing, so please do try everything you want, the program will take care of the processing itself and tell you about what is not appropriate, or not correct.

Part B: The using of the program

Supposed you are the user of the full version of the program.

Section 1: Two ways to select the web pages’ file saved.

One is that pre-selecting the files. You look for the files in the "Choosing files" frame, then select the files you want, press the button ">>" to put them to the frame "chosen files". Then you can look for other files and do selection and putting again. By this way, you can choose the files from any directories and process them at one time. After selection of the process method(s) (details in section2), you click the "Process" button that is under the frame "chosen files"

The another way is that processing files in one directory and its subdirectories (if you want and tick the "Subdirectories" checkbox). In "choosing files" frame you select the disc and directory you want. After selection of the process method(s) (details in section2), you click the "ProcessDirectory" button.

Only the files whose extension matches the extension you select or entry will be available.

Section 2: Selection the processing methods.

After you have selected the web page files, you need to decide by what method(s) the files will be processed. There are two kinds of processing, as you have known. One is stripping html tags from web pages of any types, the other is getting information from any type web pages as well as text files.

If you want to strip html tags, just tick the "Stripping html tags" checkbox in "Methods" frame. When you tick the checkbox, the other methods in the frame will be disabled. Until you tick the checkbox again to cancel "Strip html tags", the other methods can not be enabled. Then you click the button "Process" or "ProcessDirectory" according to the way of the selection files (details in section1). The program will ask you to choose a directory to save the result. The result of the stripping html tags is a set of text files (described in PartA).

If you want to get information from the files, just make a combination of "Extracting email addresses", "Extracting web sites" and "Keywords" as you want. Remember not to tick the checkbox of "Stripping html tags" (The reason is described above). The result is a text file that is like a table in database. For example (Figure1),

The combination of "Extracting email addresses", "Extracting web sites" and "Keywords" produce this result.

About "Extracting email addresses". The program will take out the email addresses in the files by finding "@" and taking the characters around it (As you know, in an email address, there is no space in it).

It is the column one "Email" in figure1.

About "Extracting web sites". The program will take out the web sites in the files by finding ":.//" and taking out the characters around it (Also as you know, there is no space in a web site URL). It is the column two "WebSite" in figure1.

About "Keywords". Keyword is a word after which the information you need is taken out. In figure1 example, the keywords are "Contact Details:", "Contact:", "Phone:".

Work with keywords. Supposed it is the first time for you to work with keywords. Firstly, you need to click the checkbox of "Keywords" in the "Processing Methods" to enable the method.

To add a new keyword, press the button "Add" that is on the right of the "Keyword" list. Then you will be asked to choose one way to add new keyword(s). One is to add new keyword(s) from an existing keyword file. At the moment you have not any keyword file, so it is not appropriate (After you have got keyword files, you can choose it. Refer to Save). Another is to add new keyword by manual. That means you add keyword one by one.

To save new keywords you have configured, press the button "Save" on the right of the "Keyword" list. That means you save the keywords to a text file that can be reuse in the future. Later, you can add it to the current keywords.

To delete a keyword, press the button "Delete". You need to select one keyword in the list to delete. To delete all the current keywords, press "Clear" button under the "Keywords" list.

To see the property of a keyword. Because you just can see the keyword itself or part of it if it is too long, when you need to know the whole configuration, you just press the button "Property".

A keyword consists of two parts. One is itself, the other is the position number of the words which make information. For example, when you see "Phone: 61 02 9999 9999" in a web page, you can configure a keyword which consists of "Phone:" and "3,4" if you just want to get the phone number which is only local number. Then you will get a column "Phone:" and its field "9999 9999". In the information, each word is departed by space, in the other words, the program consider space as the delimitation of the information words. Note the keyword itself needs to match the word in the web page strictly. For example, if you entry a keyword like "phone:" or "Phone", you can not get the information you want. And the position number of a keyword has to be in order. For example, if you set the position number of keyword "Phone:" to be "3, 4, 1", you just can get "61" as the result. But you can set it to be "2, 3, 5, 9".
In the figure1, there is a column "Contact details:" which has no information. The keyword like it is called the shield. Its part of the position number is just 0. Consider that you just want to get the information following "Contact:", if you don’t entry a shield "Contact details:", the information you want will be interfered by the "Contact details:". If "Contact" is before "Contact Details:", the shield "Contact Details:" is not necessary. If you want to information following both of them, you just entry two keywords, "Contact Detail:" and "Contact:", and give them the normal position number.

You can compose the keywords freely. The files will be processed by the current set of the keywords. That means you can add one or more keywords by manual, one or more saved keyword files that consists of several keywords, then delete some of them and prioritize them, finally make a set of current keywords you need.

With all possible methods ("Extracting email addresses", "Extracting web sites", and/or a current set of keywords), the program does a searching in this way. Firstly, it will strip all the tags in the web page in processing (it does not actually strip the tags). Then, it considers "Extracting email addresses", "Extracting web sites", and/or each keyword as an element of searching. The program will search all elements from the beginning of the remaining of the web page. If each element gets result, the program will do second searching. And the program will not repeat the results it has gotten because it knows what it has done. The results in one time searching will be a row. If the program can not get the result of any one of elements (except shield keyword), it will not produce the whole results in this searching time and it will finish its searching in this web page. So, you need to configure your searching method logically and carefully.

Appendix –an example,

The following text is the remaining of a web page after the web page has been stripped.

Contact Details

Result1,

Result2,

"Date:", 2, 4
Result is empty because in the text, there is no "Date:"

Result is empty because the program thinks that "Contact" and "Contact:" are different.