Afrous has a feature to scape web site’s HTML elements and extract some useful values from them as a structured data. Because Afrous is using user’s web browser as a runtime, it can access any web site in which users are already authenticated. No password registration is required. Please check the demonstration movie below which shows the process of extracting the information from “mixi” - the most popular social network site in Japan.
Afrous has an ability to be booted from any web site, and embedded in their application context. This feature is helpful for scraping authorized contents or intranet resources.
Following is the bookmarklet to boot Afrous Editor.
Today I’ve added new web services unit action packages in default service list : Amazon ECS, and Youtube Video. If your browser’s language is set to Japanese, you may find more web services packages are listed, such as hatena, livedoor, and pathtraq. Currently I’m showing them only for Japanese users by default, But you will be able to add other available packages by opening public library manually.
What is Afrous ?
Afrous is a JavaScript-based mash up engine which runs entirely on your web browser. No software installation is needed, no server hosting is required. You can quickly get started, create any mash-ups, run, and share them. Plenty of web services are now available and mashable under this JavaScript engine.
Intuitive mashup editor
Afrous Editor is also a web based service which enables you to create mash up process configurations easily and intuitively. In Afrous Editor, mash-up can be achieved in incremental way, dragging one web services output data, dropping it to the other web services’ input, and resulting some complex mash-upped output. For more detail, please see the demo screencasts and then boot Afrous Editor.
Runs anywhere, if web browser is there
Because Afrous is a pure javascript implementation, it is also runnble in any web application context. That is, it can be embedded in any existing web application. If you are willing to embed it, the only thing you have to do is to copy and paste some HTML/JavaScript into your blog or web site. Even if you are not a site administrator, process kickstarting bookmarklets are provided in order to dynamically inject your own mash up feature into these applications.
Supported Browsers
- Windows Internet Explorer 6, 7
- Windows/Mac Firefox 2.0
- Mac Safari 2.0
Copy, save, and share your process
Several sample processes are available in sample page, and you can copy the process to kickstart development. You can also save your created process configurations to our web server, and share with anyone you want to share. For each saved processses, unique URLs will be assigned.
JavaScript developer ? Extend it.
Afrous is extensible by writing some custom JavaScript modules (UnitAction Package). If you don’t have service module default, write custom javascript and upload them. For more detail, please see Afrous developer’s document (not available yet) .
Beyond firewalls and auth protection
Because Afrous mash up always occurs in client side (on your web browser), it is not restricted by the barrier of firewall or authentication. Afrous Editor can access your protected page information by booting from bookmarklet interface.