A Data Service Layer for Web Browser Extensions

Alex Tacuri, Sergio Firmenich, Sergio Firmenich, Gustavo Rossi, Gustavo Rossi, Alejandro Fernandez

2023

Abstract

Web browser extensions are the preferred method for end-users to modify existing web applications (and the browser itself) to fulfill unanticipated requirements. Some extensions improve existing websites based on online data, combining techniques such as mashups and augmentation. To obtain data when no APIs are available, extension developers resort to scraping. Scraping is frequently implemented with hard-coded DOM references, making code fragile. Scraping becomes more difficult when a scraping pipeline involves several websites (i.e., the result of scraping composes elements from various websites). It is challenging (if not impossible) to reuse the scraping code in different browser extensions. We propose a data service layer for browser extensions. It encapsulates site-specific search and scraping logic and exposes object-oriented search APIs. The data service layer includes a visual programming environment for the specification of data search and object model creation, which are exposed then as a programmatic API. While using this data service layer, developers are unconcerned with the complexity of data search, retrieval, scraping, and composition.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Tacuri A., Firmenich S., Rossi G. and Fernandez A. (2023). A Data Service Layer for Web Browser Extensions. In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST; ISBN 978-989-758-672-9, SciTePress, pages 49-58. DOI: 10.5220/0012165500003584

in Bibtex Style

@conference{webist23,
author={Alex Tacuri and Sergio Firmenich and Gustavo Rossi and Alejandro Fernandez},
title={A Data Service Layer for Web Browser Extensions},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST},
year={2023},
pages={49-58},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0012165500003584},
isbn={978-989-758-672-9},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST
TI - A Data Service Layer for Web Browser Extensions
SN - 978-989-758-672-9
AU - Tacuri A.
AU - Firmenich S.
AU - Rossi G.
AU - Fernandez A.
PY - 2023
SP - 49
EP - 58
DO - 10.5220/0012165500003584
PB - SciTePress