Table of Contents

Introduction

80apps are custom apps that process web pages according to specific instructions.  This can include data scraping, capturing images, semantic processing, and much more.  They can be pre-built by the team at 80legs or they can be written by you.

An 80app can be selected when creating a crawl job.  When selected, the 80app will be run on the content of any page that is analyzed during the crawl.

The Basics - How 80apps Work

The basic process of how 80apps work is as follows:

1. A page is visited during the crawl.
2. The contents of the page are downloaded.
3. The 80app is run on the page.  The contents of the processDocument() function inside the 80app code process the page contents and return a result for that page.
4. If specified, the 80app will also determine which pages to crawl next based on the page content.  The contents of the parseLinks() function inside the 80app code are responsible for determining this.
5. Once the crawl completes, all results are stored in a result file that is available for download.

This simple process repeats over every page that is crawled.  Additional details on the code/structure of 80apps can be found in the Writing Your Own 80app section below.

Using 80apps

In order to use an 80app, you can do any of the following:

1. Purchase a Pricing Plan, which gives you access to a variety of pre-built 80apps for free
2. Purchase an individual 80app from the Marketplace
   
3. Write your own 80app, which you can customize to meet your specific needs

Using a Pre-Built 80app

Several pre-built 80apps are available to use.

Using a Pricing Plan to access 80apps

Purchasing a pricing plan gives you free access to pre-built 80apps.  To purchase a pricing plan and use the available 80apps, you can do the following:

1. Log in to the 80legs Portal and purchase a plan from the Pricing Plans tab.
2. Create a new crawl job.
3. Under "Analysis Settings", click on 80apps to see your available 80apps.  Select the 80app you want to use and follow the instructions for that 80app.

Purchasing an 80app from the Marketplace

If you don't want to purchase a pricing plan, you can still access pre-built 80apps from the Marketplace by doing the following:

1. Log in to the 80legs Portal and navigate to the Marketplace.
2. Purchase the 80app you want to use.  Most 80apps are free for purchase but are priced on a per-use basis in terms of millions of pages analyzed.
3. Create a new crawl job.
4. Under "Analysis Settings", click on 80apps to see your available 80apps.  The 80app you just purchased will be available here.

To learn more about the Marketplace, click here.

Writing Your Own 80app

80legs lets you write your own 80apps to fully customize how you crawl and process web pages.  Learning how to make an 80app can take some effort, but is well worth it if you want complete control over your crawls.

Click here to get started with writing your own 80apps.