Rival Alert is a data scraper that keeps track of statistics located on public web sites: forum registrations count, page visits, stock price or number of search results — any kind of numeric data.



It is designed for those who want to automate the process of keeping an eye on competitors performance. The primary purpose of Rival Alert is to grab every day data from defined web sites and show changes graphs helping further analysis.

It provides you with abilities to compare different graphs, to get email alerts when a graph soars up or plummets down, and to flag events on the graphs.

As result of working with Rival Alert, you:

• get visualisation (a change graph for any selected period) of collected data with ability to export the graph as an image
• are kept informed by email notifications when a graph trend dramatically changes
• have posibility to export collected data for any further processing
• [in development] would be able to paste interactive widgets with current info to your pages
• [in development] would be able to share most interesting charts
• [in development] get notification when the source page structure has changed and you'd better redefine parameters

You have two ways to add new charts: manual (Live Example) or automatical (Live Example).

Check their description below.

To cut a long story short, here is a Live Example.

To add a new chart in manual mode, do the following:

1. Log in into the Rival Alert using your email and password.
2. Click "Add new chart" link at the top right.
3. In the dialog appeared, paste the URL of a page or FeedBurner counter image you want to track.
4. If you added a FeedBurner counter image URL, click Add button - that is all.
5. If you added a page URL, you should define how to find the number you are interested in at the page you've mentioned. To do that, open the HTML contents of the that page (usually it's View - Page Source menu) and find the piece of data you want to track. Now is the most interesting - paste the main tags leading to that data in the "Cut from" field ("Cut to" field is not required and usually works automagically). Then press "Test" button and check in the message appeared that your data has been parsed correctly - if not, tune the values in the "Cut from" field. (Hint: you can use [BLA-BLA] or new-line symbol to indicate that some information must be skipped. Want to know more?)

There is also automatical mode available.

To indicate that some portions of information must be skipped while parsing (that data can be dinamic), you can use the following:

• [BLA]
• [BLA-BLA]
• [BLA-BLA-BLA]
• [SOMETHING]
• a new line symbol

 Live Example: you want to track new private spaces count for previous day at Assembla.com.



To do that you open Community page and find the value in the page source:

<tr> 
  <td>New private spaces</td> 
  <td>0</td> 
  <td>19</td> 
  <td>126</td> 
</tr> 

Desired value is 19, it's in the 2nd cell, right? Now, to set Rival Alert on this, you define the following in the "Cut text from" field of adding new chart dialog (remember about 2nd cell?):

New private spaces[SOMETHING]<td>[SOMETHING]<td>

OR

New private spaces[BLA-BLA]<td>[BLA]<td>

OR just

New private spaces
<td>
<td>

Let's say, you want to track how many Fergie songs plays were there at Last.fm.



OK, you open Fergie profile page source and find the plays count:



Now go to Rival Alert, click "Add new chart" and type as here:



Then you click Test button to check whether Rival Alert has parsed your data correctly:



If values are the same (in Fergie profile and in the message appeared), you press Add button - from this day on you will be aware of this data changes.

Automatical mode is experimental, but handy :]

To add a new chart in automatical mode (automagically, as we say), do this:

1. Install Firefox browser (Internet Explorer version is coming soon)
2. Install our special addon Rival Alert Pal
3. Go to the page where the data you have an eye on is.
4. If you want to track textual number value, select it by your mouse, right-click on it and choose "Add to Rival Alert". That's all
5. If you want to track a FeedBurner counter image, just right-click on it and choose "Add to Rival Alert". Done.

 Live Example: you want to track Google search resuls count for Large Hadron Collider.



To do that, select the results count number and add to Rival Alert by clicking the correspondent context menu item. Of course, you can use manual mode too.