Find and download a row item (.csv file) from a webpage table element

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Posted on by pgree

Hello PA Community,

I want to download a file from a website and would appreciate some help.

My attended desktop flow launches the target webpage that has a table with four columns of data including date, report name, file type (pdf or csv), and a download link. I want the flow to download only one file that has a specific date which can be an input variable, and is of file type csv. In other words it never needs to download a file type of pdf. The flow has been set to trigger on specific dates, each time it needs to find and download the latest csv file. If it is of any help, the target file is always in row two of the table.

Being new to PA, I'm finding this a challenging flow to build and would really appreciate any assistance.

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Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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If it is always in row 2, the easiest way to do it would be to capture the link to the file in row 2 and click it (if it is clickable) using Click link on web page or Press button on web page, or extract it and use Go to web page or Download from web (the latter action being under the HTTP actions group) to download your file.

If it is in any way dynamic because of the date or the file type, you would need to use Extract data from web page to extract the entire table first, then find the row you need and then use one of the actions suggested above to accomplish what you need.

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pgree 9 on at

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Thank you Agnius,

Very helpful.

While it is always in row two of the table, the data is dynamic, so I have used Extract data from web page which produced a DataTable. Which action do I use next to 'find the row' I need from the DataTable?

Thanks PG

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Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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You can use Find or replace in data table to find specific values. This will return a table that contains row and column indexes for each match.

You can also loop through the table until you find the right row, if you need to find it based on more than one criteria. Using a For each loop on the table will result in a %CurrentItem% variable that contains the current row. You can then use %CurrentItem['ColumnName']% (replacing the ColumnName with an actual name of a column in your table) or %CurrentItem[ColumnIndex]% (note that numeric indexes are passed without single quotes) if your columns do not have names. If you pass that to a condition, you can check the values until you find the one you need. Then use Exit loop to stop looping and use the current value to navigate further.

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pgree 9 on at

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We are making great progress. Thank you.

I have the following:

Extract data from web page
For each CurrentItem in DataFromWebPage loop
>If %CurrentItem['Date']% = DD/MM/YYYY then
>>If %CurrentItem['FileType']% = CSV then
>>>Exit loop
>>End
>End
End

The above results in a DataRow variable saved in CurrentItem which is the row I want to download the CSV file from, which is great news. The download link is located in the DataRow column named action. You said to then use one of the following to download the file:
Click link on web page
Press button on web page
Go to web page
Download from web

None of these seem to allow me to download the CSV file in column action of the DataRow saved in the variable CurrentItem, at least not that I can work out.

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Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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Try extracting the link as an additional column to your data table. This will then result in the URL as one of the columns in CurrentItem and you will be able to use that in Go to web page or Download from web.

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