Apify

The Apify piece in ZBrain Flow provides integration with Apify's web scraping and automation platform, allowing you to extract data from websites and run web automation tasks directly from your workflows. This powerful connector enables you to leverage Apify's extensive library of web scrapers (called Actors) without manual intervention. With Apify integration, you can build automations that gather web data, run scheduled web scraping jobs, process extracted information, and incorporate web data into your business processes. This piece is ideal for organizations looking to automate data collection from websites, monitor online content, extract structured information from the web, and integrate web data into their digital ecosystem.

How to use Apify in ZBrain flow?

Select Apify as your connection

• Click on the '+' button in the Flow and search for Apify.

• Select Apify.

• Decide on the action you need, then select it. ZBrain Flow provides several options:

  • Get dataset items – Retrieve data extracted from Actor runs.

  • Get user's actors – List all available web scrapers in your Apify account.

  • Get last run details – Check the status and information about recent Actor executions.

  • Start an Apify actor – Launch a web scraper to collect data from websites.

How to connect to the Apify platform

Before using any Apify actions in ZBrain Flow, you'll need to set up a connection to your Apify account. This is a one-time setup that will allow you to access your web scraping resources securely.

To create your Apify connection:

• From any Apify action, click on the connection dropdown and select 'Create connection'.

• In the pop-up window that appears, you'll need to:

  • Enter a descriptive 'Connection Name' to identify this Apify connection

  • In the 'API Key' field, enter your Apify API token

  • Click 'Save' to store this connection

To obtain your Apify API key:

1. Log in to your Apify account

2. Navigate to the "Settings" section

3. Go to "API & Integrations"

4. Copy your API token

How to get the dataset items

Configuration steps:

• Connect to your Apify account following the steps in the "How to connect to the Apify platform" section.

• In the 'The runid of the Actor (alphanumeric)' field, enter the dataset identifier for the Actor run results you want to retrieve. This is typically the defaultDatasetId from a completed Actor run.

How to get the user's actors

To get the user's actors, you simply need to connect to your Apify account following the steps in the "How to connect to the Apify platform" section.

How to get the last run details

Configuration steps:

• Connect to your Apify account following the steps in the "How to connect to the Apify platform" section.

• In the 'The id of the Actor (alphanumeric)' field, enter the identifier for the actor whose last run details you want to retrieve. This can be the actor's ID (alphanumeric string).

How to start an Apify actor

Configuration steps:

• Connect to your Apify account following the steps in the "How to connect to the Apify platform" section.

• In the 'The id or name of the Actor (alphanumeric)' field, enter the identifier for the actor you want to run. This can be the actor's ID (alphanumeric string) or the username.

• In the 'JSON input' field, provide the configuration parameters for the actor in JSON format. If left blank, the actor will use its default settings.