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Extract Data From a web page

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Posted on by Steve48

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I am a newbie. I am trying to extract data from a web page. I am trying to extract 1 column from a table. This column is a column of links. using the UI Assistant, I wasn't able to click on the link. I could only extract the text. The "Anchor" kept disappearing. href did not appear in the dropdown that asks what I wanted to extract. So I inspected the page and found that the table has id="searchTable" and the link (a) had an id="#". I filled in the table as shown in the screenshot but the preview showed said i was extracting a 0 column table. Not sure what to do next.

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Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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Try doing a[Id="#"] here:

And leave the attribute as "href" only. What you put in there is not something that would ever work with PAD.

Also, I would still suggest adding a bit more child elements into the Base CCS selector. Probably at least until you include a table row (<tr>) element.
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Steve48 431 on at

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Agnius-Thank you for your response. I redid my entry as shown in the screenshot but still got a zero-column extraction. So no good. In the attribute field, I entered href but it gets autocorrected to Href.
I am also attaching the result of my inspection which shows the selectors. for the <a> it seems as if class="linkToPage" might be a good selector but I was unsure how to enter it into the form. You can also see the tableSearch element but I was unsure how to enter more of it into the form. TIA Steve

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Steve48 431 on at

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I am the OP.
Hi I copied the selectors using Chrome inspector: for the table it is #searchTable and for the link it is
#searchTable > tbody > tr:nth-child(2) > td:nth-child(2) > a
but am not sure how to enter these into theHelper

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Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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Okay, seems like I misread your previous question a bit.

Try using the following:
Base CSS selector: table[Id="searchTable"] > tbody > tr
CSS selector (column 1): td:eq(1) > a
This will make it extract all rows and the 2nd column (because indexes are 0-based) from each row.

Also, use the "Own Text" as the property that you are trying to extract from the value. I thought you wanted the Href, but it is actually simply "#" in there, so there's not much to extract. I assume you actually need the text value instead. So, using Own Text will get you that.
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Steve48 431 on at

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Thank you. You were a big help. Now I see how to do it. That extracted the data. What's interesting is that I got an error because I left the 2nd row in the wizard was blank. When I filled it in with another CSS Selector the data got extracted. I actually wanted the href so I filled that in instead. The wizard forces you to extract at least 2 columns. I had a problem with the extracted data but I will close this topic and create a separate Post for that issue.

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Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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It requires 2 columns when you select a table as the output. You could select a list instead and then you would only be required to extract a single column.

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Steve48 431 on at

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My problem with the data was that the first row was not as desired. I used the wrong action to delete it. I used "Delete Item From List" instead of "Delete Item From Data Table" Now everything works. Thank you again Agnius

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