Dears, my question is as follow:
please see my table
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1c-oyXZHjmt69FpZI2d8NEAPh5ZAAlVljTNdeypUd38g/edit?usp=sharing
I'm trying to download list of exhibitors by import xml
And I even can download first page of it. (you could see in table).
But the matter is I can't understand how to download other pages, because table made by Javascript.
Google Sheets import functions only can import content that is available without user interaction on the source. You should check if the source allow the use of URL parameters. If so, you should make a formula for each table page.
Related
I am trying to import data from the following website to Google Sheets. I want to import all the matches for the day.
https://www.tournamentsoftware.com/tournament/b731fdcd-a0c8-4558-9344-2a14c267ee8b/Matches
I have tried importxml and importhtml, but it seems this does not work as the website uses JavaScript. I have also tried to use Apipheny without any success.
When using Apipheny, the error message is
'Failed to fetch data - please verify your API Request: {DNS error'
Tl;Dr
Adapted from my answer to How to know if Google Sheets IMPORTDATA, IMPORTFEED, IMPORTHTML or IMPORTXML functions are able to get data from a resource hosted on a website? (also posted by me)
Please spend some time learning how to use the browsers developers tools so you will be able to identify
if the data is already included in source code of the webpage as JSON / literal JavaScript object or in another form
if the webpage is doing a GET or POST requests to retrieve the data and when those requests are done (i.e. as some point of the page parsing, or on event)
if the requests require data from cookies
Brief guide about how to use the web browser to find useful details about the webpage / data to import
Open the source code and look if the required data is included. Sometimes the data is included as JSON and added to the DOM using JavaScript. In this case it might be possible to retrieve the data by using the Google Sheets functions or URL Fetch Service from Google Apps Script.
Let say that you use Chrome. Open the Dev Tools, then look at the Elements tab. There you will see the DOM. It might be helpful to identify if the data that you want to import besides being on visible elements is included in hidden / not visible elements like <script> tags.
Look at Source, there you might be able to see the JavaScript code. It might include the data that you want to import as JavaScript object (commonly referred as JSON).
There are a lot of questions about google-sheets +web-scraping that mentions problems using importhtml and/or importxml that already have answers and even many include code (JavaScript snippets, Google Apps Script functions, etc.) that might save you to have to use an specialized web-scraping tool that has a more stepped learning curve. At the bottom of this answer there is a list of questions about using Google Sheets built-in functions, including annotations of the workaround proposed.
On Is there a way to get a single response from a text/event-stream without using event listeners? ask about using EventSource. While this can't be used on server side code, the answer show how to use the HtmlService to use it on client-side code and retrieve the result to Google Sheets.
As you already realized, the Google Sheets built-in functions importhtml(), importxml(), importdata() and importfeed() only work with static pages that do not require signing in or other forms of authentication.
When the content of a public page is created dynamically by using JavaScript, it cannot be accessed with those functions, by the other hand the website's webmaster may also purposefully have prevented web scraping.
How to identify if content is added dynamically
To check if the content is added dynamically, using Chrome,
Open the URL of the source data.
Press F12 to open Chrome Developer Tools
Press Control+Shift+P to open the Command Menu.
Start typing javascript, select Disable JavaScript, and then press Enter to run the command. JavaScript is now disabled.
JavaScript will remain disabled in this tab so long as you have DevTools open.
Reload the page to see if the content that you want to import is shown, if it's shown it could be imported by using Google Sheets built-in functions, otherwise it's not possible but might be possible by using other means for doing web scraping.
According to Wikipedia,
Web scraping, web harvesting, or web data extraction is data scraping used for extracting data from websites.
Use of robots.txt to block Web crawlers
The webmasters could use robots.txt file to block access to website. In such case the result will be #N/A Could not fetch URL.
Use of User agent
The webpage could be designed to return a special a custom message instead of the data.
Below there are more details about how Google Sheets built-in "web-scraping" functions works
IMPORTDATA, IMPORTFEED, IMPORTHTML and IMPORTXML are able to get content from resources hosted on websites that are:
Publicly available. This means that the resource doesn't require authorization / to be logged in into any service to access it.
The content is "static". This mean that if you open the resource using the view source code option of modern web browsers it will be displayed as plain text.
NOTE: The Chrome's Inspect tool shows the parsed DOM; in other works the actual structure/content of the web page which could be dynamically modified by JavaScript code or browser extensions/plugins.
The content has the appropriated structure.
IMPORTDATA works with structured content as csv or tsv doesn't matter of the file extension of the resource.
IMPORTFEED works with marked up content as ATOM/RSS
IMPORTHTML works with marked up content as HTML that includes properly markedup list or tables.
IMPORTXML works with marked up content as XML or any of its variants like XHTML.
The content doesn't exceeds the maximum size. Google haven't disclosed this limit but the below error will be shown when the content exceeds the maximum size:
Resource at url contents exceeded maximum size.
Google servers are not blocked by means of robots.txt or the user agent.
On W3C Markup Validator there are several tools to checkout is the resources had been properly marked up.
Regarding CSV check out Are there known services to validate CSV files
It's worth to note that the spreadsheet
should have enough room for the imported content; Google Sheets has a 10 million cell limit by spreadsheet, according to this post a columns limit of 18278, and a 50 thousand characters as cell content even as a value or formula.
it doesn't handle well large in-cell content; the "limit" depends on the user screen size and resolution as now it's possible to zoom in/out.
References
https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/javascript/disable
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping
Related
Using Google Apps Script to scrape Dynamic Web Pages
Scraping data from website using vba
Block Website Scraping by Google Docs
Is there a way to get a single response from a text/event-stream without using event listeners?
Software Recommendations
Web scraping tool/software available for free?
Recommendations for web scraping tools that require minimal installation
Web Applications
The following question is about a different result, #N/A Could not fetch URL
Inability to use IMPORTHTML in Google sheets
Similar questions
Some of this questions might be closed as duplicate of this one
Importing javascript table into Google Docs spreadsheet
Importxml Imported Content Empty
scrape table using google app scripts
One answer includes Google Apps Script code using the URL Fetch Service
Capture element using ImportXML with XPath
How to import Javascript tables into Google spreadsheet?
Scrape the current share price data from the ASX
One of the answers includes Google Apps Script code to get data from a JSON source
Guidance on webscraping using Google Sheets
How to Scrape data from Indiegogo.com in google sheets via IMPORTXML formula
Why importxml and importhtml not working here?
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One answer includes Google Apps Script code using the URL Fetch Service
Google Sheets - Pull Data for investment portfolio
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IMPORTXML shows an error while scraping data from website
One answer shows the xhr request found using browser developer tools
Replacing =ImportHTML with URLFetchApp
One answer includes Google Apps Script code using the URL Fetch Service
How to use IMPORTXML to import hidden div tag?
Google Sheet Web-scraping ImportXml Xpath on Yahoo Finance doesn't works with french stock
One of the answers includes Google Apps Script code to get data from a JSON source. As of January 4th 2023, it's not longer working, very likely because Yahoo! Finance is now encrying the JSON. See the Tainake's answer to How to pull Yahoo Finance Historical Price Data from its Object with Google Apps Script? for script using Crypto.js to handle this.
How to fetch data which is loaded by the ajax (asynchronous) method after the web page has already been loaded using apps script?
One answer suggest to read the data from the server instead of scraping from a webpage.
Using ImportXML to pull data
Extracting data from web page using Cheerio Library
One answer suggest the use of an API and Google Apps Script
ImportXML is good for basic tasks, but it won't get you too far if you are serious in scraping:
The approach only works with the most basic websites (no SPAs rendered in browsers can be scraped this way. Any basic web scraping protection or connectivity issue breaks the process, and there isn't any control over HTTP request geo location, or number of retries) - and Yahoo Finance is not a simple website
If the target website data requires some cleanup post-processing, it's getting very complicated since you are now "programming with Excel formulas", rather a painful process compared to regular code writing in conventional programming languages
There isn't any proper launch and cache control, so the function can be triggered occasionally and if the HTTP request fails, cells will be populated with ERR! values
I recommend using proper tools (automation framework and scraping engine which can render JavaScript-powered websites) and use Google Sheets just for basic storage purposes:
https://youtu.be/uBC752CWTew (Pipedream for automation and ScrapeNinja engine for scraping)
I am trying to import data from the following website to Google Sheets. I want to import all the matches for the day.
https://www.tournamentsoftware.com/tournament/b731fdcd-a0c8-4558-9344-2a14c267ee8b/Matches
I have tried importxml and importhtml, but it seems this does not work as the website uses JavaScript. I have also tried to use Apipheny without any success.
When using Apipheny, the error message is
'Failed to fetch data - please verify your API Request: {DNS error'
Tl;Dr
Adapted from my answer to How to know if Google Sheets IMPORTDATA, IMPORTFEED, IMPORTHTML or IMPORTXML functions are able to get data from a resource hosted on a website? (also posted by me)
Please spend some time learning how to use the browsers developers tools so you will be able to identify
if the data is already included in source code of the webpage as JSON / literal JavaScript object or in another form
if the webpage is doing a GET or POST requests to retrieve the data and when those requests are done (i.e. as some point of the page parsing, or on event)
if the requests require data from cookies
Brief guide about how to use the web browser to find useful details about the webpage / data to import
Open the source code and look if the required data is included. Sometimes the data is included as JSON and added to the DOM using JavaScript. In this case it might be possible to retrieve the data by using the Google Sheets functions or URL Fetch Service from Google Apps Script.
Let say that you use Chrome. Open the Dev Tools, then look at the Elements tab. There you will see the DOM. It might be helpful to identify if the data that you want to import besides being on visible elements is included in hidden / not visible elements like <script> tags.
Look at Source, there you might be able to see the JavaScript code. It might include the data that you want to import as JavaScript object (commonly referred as JSON).
There are a lot of questions about google-sheets +web-scraping that mentions problems using importhtml and/or importxml that already have answers and even many include code (JavaScript snippets, Google Apps Script functions, etc.) that might save you to have to use an specialized web-scraping tool that has a more stepped learning curve. At the bottom of this answer there is a list of questions about using Google Sheets built-in functions, including annotations of the workaround proposed.
On Is there a way to get a single response from a text/event-stream without using event listeners? ask about using EventSource. While this can't be used on server side code, the answer show how to use the HtmlService to use it on client-side code and retrieve the result to Google Sheets.
As you already realized, the Google Sheets built-in functions importhtml(), importxml(), importdata() and importfeed() only work with static pages that do not require signing in or other forms of authentication.
When the content of a public page is created dynamically by using JavaScript, it cannot be accessed with those functions, by the other hand the website's webmaster may also purposefully have prevented web scraping.
How to identify if content is added dynamically
To check if the content is added dynamically, using Chrome,
Open the URL of the source data.
Press F12 to open Chrome Developer Tools
Press Control+Shift+P to open the Command Menu.
Start typing javascript, select Disable JavaScript, and then press Enter to run the command. JavaScript is now disabled.
JavaScript will remain disabled in this tab so long as you have DevTools open.
Reload the page to see if the content that you want to import is shown, if it's shown it could be imported by using Google Sheets built-in functions, otherwise it's not possible but might be possible by using other means for doing web scraping.
According to Wikipedia,
Web scraping, web harvesting, or web data extraction is data scraping used for extracting data from websites.
Use of robots.txt to block Web crawlers
The webmasters could use robots.txt file to block access to website. In such case the result will be #N/A Could not fetch URL.
Use of User agent
The webpage could be designed to return a special a custom message instead of the data.
Below there are more details about how Google Sheets built-in "web-scraping" functions works
IMPORTDATA, IMPORTFEED, IMPORTHTML and IMPORTXML are able to get content from resources hosted on websites that are:
Publicly available. This means that the resource doesn't require authorization / to be logged in into any service to access it.
The content is "static". This mean that if you open the resource using the view source code option of modern web browsers it will be displayed as plain text.
NOTE: The Chrome's Inspect tool shows the parsed DOM; in other works the actual structure/content of the web page which could be dynamically modified by JavaScript code or browser extensions/plugins.
The content has the appropriated structure.
IMPORTDATA works with structured content as csv or tsv doesn't matter of the file extension of the resource.
IMPORTFEED works with marked up content as ATOM/RSS
IMPORTHTML works with marked up content as HTML that includes properly markedup list or tables.
IMPORTXML works with marked up content as XML or any of its variants like XHTML.
The content doesn't exceeds the maximum size. Google haven't disclosed this limit but the below error will be shown when the content exceeds the maximum size:
Resource at url contents exceeded maximum size.
Google servers are not blocked by means of robots.txt or the user agent.
On W3C Markup Validator there are several tools to checkout is the resources had been properly marked up.
Regarding CSV check out Are there known services to validate CSV files
It's worth to note that the spreadsheet
should have enough room for the imported content; Google Sheets has a 10 million cell limit by spreadsheet, according to this post a columns limit of 18278, and a 50 thousand characters as cell content even as a value or formula.
it doesn't handle well large in-cell content; the "limit" depends on the user screen size and resolution as now it's possible to zoom in/out.
References
https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/javascript/disable
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping
Related
Using Google Apps Script to scrape Dynamic Web Pages
Scraping data from website using vba
Block Website Scraping by Google Docs
Is there a way to get a single response from a text/event-stream without using event listeners?
Software Recommendations
Web scraping tool/software available for free?
Recommendations for web scraping tools that require minimal installation
Web Applications
The following question is about a different result, #N/A Could not fetch URL
Inability to use IMPORTHTML in Google sheets
Similar questions
Some of this questions might be closed as duplicate of this one
Importing javascript table into Google Docs spreadsheet
Importxml Imported Content Empty
scrape table using google app scripts
One answer includes Google Apps Script code using the URL Fetch Service
Capture element using ImportXML with XPath
How to import Javascript tables into Google spreadsheet?
Scrape the current share price data from the ASX
One of the answers includes Google Apps Script code to get data from a JSON source
Guidance on webscraping using Google Sheets
How to Scrape data from Indiegogo.com in google sheets via IMPORTXML formula
Why importxml and importhtml not working here?
Google Sheet use Importxml error could not fetch url
One answer includes Google Apps Script code using the URL Fetch Service
Google Sheets - Pull Data for investment portfolio
Extracting value from API/Webpage
IMPORTXML shows an error while scraping data from website
One answer shows the xhr request found using browser developer tools
Replacing =ImportHTML with URLFetchApp
One answer includes Google Apps Script code using the URL Fetch Service
How to use IMPORTXML to import hidden div tag?
Google Sheet Web-scraping ImportXml Xpath on Yahoo Finance doesn't works with french stock
One of the answers includes Google Apps Script code to get data from a JSON source. As of January 4th 2023, it's not longer working, very likely because Yahoo! Finance is now encrying the JSON. See the Tainake's answer to How to pull Yahoo Finance Historical Price Data from its Object with Google Apps Script? for script using Crypto.js to handle this.
How to fetch data which is loaded by the ajax (asynchronous) method after the web page has already been loaded using apps script?
One answer suggest to read the data from the server instead of scraping from a webpage.
Using ImportXML to pull data
Extracting data from web page using Cheerio Library
One answer suggest the use of an API and Google Apps Script
ImportXML is good for basic tasks, but it won't get you too far if you are serious in scraping:
The approach only works with the most basic websites (no SPAs rendered in browsers can be scraped this way. Any basic web scraping protection or connectivity issue breaks the process, and there isn't any control over HTTP request geo location, or number of retries) - and Yahoo Finance is not a simple website
If the target website data requires some cleanup post-processing, it's getting very complicated since you are now "programming with Excel formulas", rather a painful process compared to regular code writing in conventional programming languages
There isn't any proper launch and cache control, so the function can be triggered occasionally and if the HTTP request fails, cells will be populated with ERR! values
I recommend using proper tools (automation framework and scraping engine which can render JavaScript-powered websites) and use Google Sheets just for basic storage purposes:
https://youtu.be/uBC752CWTew (Pipedream for automation and ScrapeNinja engine for scraping)
Hello I need to extract Feature table from protein page in NCBI webpage. Example of page is here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/Q8TB36.3
I am writing script in Python 3.x, using BeautifulSoup package for getting html of page. Problem is, that if I download html source of this page, I am not getting Feature table - Feature table is generated by javascript?
Is there any way, how to call that script and generate Feature table on my own? Or any other way how to extract desired data from page?
Thank you for advice
The JavaScript fetch data from this url:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sviewer/viewer.fcgi?id=269849682&db=protein&report=genpept&extrafeat=984&fmt_mask=0&retmode=html&withmarkup=on&tool=portal&log$=seqview&maxplex=3&maxdownloadsize=1000000
You can make requests to this url and get the data you need.
You can find this url in Chrome Dev tools.
I want to create a script that would do the followings:
create a form
once a user fill the form and submit, the script would copy a
previously created Google Document "template" and fill out the fields
the copied template with the information submitted.
Now I am aware that you can not create scripts within the "Document" container (only Spreadsheet and Sites), but can a standalone Google Apps Script read or write directly to Document like the way it could with Spreadsheet?
I read somewhere that Google Apps Script can not read text from a Google Document, but only text and CSV. Is that still true with the recently update to Google Apps Script?
Yes, this can be done. The easiest example to follow is Employee of the Week example. This takes in user input , merges it into a doc and automatically emails the result out to the user, which you can remove if you like. There also a video tutorial. Should get you pointed in the right direction.
Yes, you can use DocumentApp.
hi i would like to know how i can embed a excel spreadsheet in a web page and change the excel numbers on the hosted file and this in turn automatically changes the webpage sheet?
would like to know if there is a jquery, javascript, css etc code to help me out
for example, book1.xls will be uploaded to the server and index.html will reflect book1.xls as a table in it. when i update book1.xls, it should automatically show in index.html the changed cells.
thanks in advance
The simple way to actually connect to an XLS is through VBScript, but your server will have to support it (which most do).
Another way would be add an ODBC to your servers connectors pointing to your XLS or MDB or whatever Microsoft data file you choose and use JavaScript or any number of languages to connect to it, retrieve data, make changes, etc. The downside is that you must have Administrative rights to the computer hosting the file. You can use a homecomputer to use as server for that file only for instance and link it to your website, but it will affect loading speeds. This will however require you to take a closer look at your home internet security...!!!...but will enable you to make 'live' changes without going to your website. This method is often used for webshops and online catalogues, places where data can change on a daily basis but a database server is undesirable.
The simplest and easiest way is as mentioned before the use of GoogleDocs, but that will require conversion of the document. You won't be using your XLS as datafile. The downside here is that if you make any changes offline (not through the website) the changes will also not be visible, because you'll be editing a completely different file. So you'll need to convert and upload it to GoogleDocs each and every time.
As you can see the method used greatly depends on how often you plan on updating the data, how much traffic you expect and how secure you want it to be.
A "live" spreadsheet can be shown in a web page via an iframe containing a Google Doc spreadsheet. You cut 'n paste the iframe markup from Google Docs and drop it into your web page. The spreadsheet is editable in GDocs. The iframe view can be set to automatically update when the ss is edited.
Perhaps, this is too bland a solution. But it works. I use it all the time.
I doubt you can do that directly from an .xls file, but if you save your Excel file as .csv, you can read a .csv file via jQuery.
There's a plugin here that displays data from a csv file as a table: http://plugins.jquery.com/project/csv2table
The same/similar question is also asked in these posts:
Read Excel data with JQuery
How to parse an excel file in JavaScript?