You can figure out if your project has issues or how your project is behaving by using a Test Run.
Note that this feature does not ensure that your project will run perfectly on our servers. There are a few potential reasons that your project runs might be failing:
- The page is taking too long to load for our scrapers.
- The website is IP Blocking when our scrapers load it.
- The page you were working on and the actual starting site is different.
Please check out this article to learn more about these issues and how to fix them. However, if you are still not able to troubleshoot the problem, feel free to Contact Support.
Run the ParseHub project through the Test Run
1) Click the "Get Data" button.
2) Clicking on the gear icon next to "Test Run" will take you to Advanced options, where you can input custom Starting Pages and Starting values. Normally, this should not be necessary.
3) We can choose to start the test run from a different template by changing the starting template. The starting value field can be used to pass some values to the project for the test run. Click on the Open a Test Run (Debug) to start the test run.
4) There are five main buttons in a test run shown on the top left side of the panel. You can press the down arrow (Step in) button (top left) to walk ParseHub through the project, watching what ParseHub does with each command. The Play button goes through your commands slowly, allowing you to see how the project is working. The Fast Forward button runs through your commands quickly, simulating what a run might look like on our servers. The next button is the Pause button that can be used to pause the run. And the last button can be used to stop the test run and exit. The Test Run represents what happens on the servers when ParseHub runs the project.
5) There are two very useful radio buttons (Red and Green) next to each command. We can use the red button to pause a run on a specific node/command during the test run. The green button can be used to skip the command during a test run.
6) We can also edit the project during the test run. Let's assume we want to go to the page-no:10 of the website and then start the test run from there. We can do this by changing the mode from Select mode to Browse mode and click on page 10 to load the page, then play the test run.
7) You can test run the entire project by clicking the fast forward button, third from the top left. This will let you quickly run through some commands
By pressing the Play button, Fast Forward button or the Step in button you can start the test run and monitor the results on the bottom right side of the window. To see more data, click on the "more" button when the Test Run stops playing.
You also have access to the Test Run Logs one the bottom left side of the window. These logs allow you to monitor each command that is executing and find the possible issues with the project.
8) Click on the Stop button to exit the test run when you're done with testing your commands and you are happy with your project.