Last year I blogged about how to use the Text.BetweenDelimiters() function to extract all the links from the href attributes in the source of a web page. The code was reasonably simple but there’s now an even easier way to solve the same problem using the new Html.Table() function. This function doesn’t seem to be documented online yet, but the built-in documentation for the function available in the Query Editor is up-to-date:
Miguel Escobar also has a great post showing how to use it and the new Web.BrowserContents function here.
Here’s an example M query that extracts all the links that start with the letters “http” from my company homepage:
let
Source =
Web.BrowserContents("https://www.crossjoin.co.uk/"),
Links =
Html.Table(
Source,
{{
"Link",
"a[href^=""http""]",
each [Attributes][href]}})
in
Links
To explain what’s going on here:
- Web.BrowserContents returns the text of the html DOM for the web page
- In the second step Html.Table takes that text and searches for all <a> elements whose href attribute starts with the letters “http”. I found this CSS selector here.
Great.
But it could be cool if we could use all these great data extraction tools from SSIS also 🙂
Chris,
This apparently doesn’t work the current version of Excel 365. Data, Get & Transform Data doesn’t recognize either of these functions:
…Web.BrowserContents
…Html.Table
Charley
Those functions obviously haven’t made their way to Excel yet; I guess they’ll be added in the next few months.
After almost two years, Power Query in Excel 365 still does not recognize these two functions.
2 years 1 month later. Excel 365 still doesn’t support this function. Is there a workaround to make this function work in Excel?
And here we are in 2021 – still no sign of it.
Python.Execute is intersting
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Hi Chris. Great Tutorial!
I have a issue with the refresh when I use Power BI online with the Web.BrowserContents. I see this error message:
Query contains unknown funtion name: Web.BrowserContents.
Query contains unknown funtion name: Html.Table.
Do you have any idea to fix it?
Thanks!
Are you trying to use this in Excel or an old version of Power BI Desktop? Not all versions of the Power Query engine include this function.
I’m using the lastest version of Power BI desktop. With the desktop i can refresh te webcontent, however when I publish to Power BI online I can’t refresh. The error message show that the query contains a unknown funcion related to HTML and Web Content. I’ll keep trying. Thanks!
Great, thank you very much Chris 👍
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Very interesting tutorial Chris, I tried to apply this but I’m still struggling to get data from Yahoo Finance – Income Statement Table. I need the Income Statement (Quarterly data) for Apple from this link: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL/financials?p=AAPL&.tsrc=fin-srch
Since the page address does not change, I have not managed to extract Quarterly data instead of Annual data which appears in the initial page.
Do you you have a suggestion on how to manipulate the table selector (Annual /Quarterly)?
Regards,
Mark
No, sorry, I’m not good enough with CSS selectors to help here
Ok Chris, the selector I’ve already identified – button.P\\(0px\\)
the issue is how to manipulate to load Quarterly data
‘button.P\\(0px\\)’
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Hi Chris, if I’m trying to get a connection to a report that is intranet based (i.e. internal organizational http website) I’m having issues to connect. Do you have any suggestion on how to get that type of connection?
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Hi Chris
Is there any function in Power Query that can do the task .
.
i have used this
————————————————————————–
(URL) as table =>
let
Source = Web.Page(Web.Contents(URL)),
Data0 = Source{0}[Data],
#”Changed Type” = Table.TransformColumnTypes(Data0,{{“Column1”, Int64.Type}, {“Column2”, type text}, {“Column3″, type text}}),
#”Filtered Rows” = Table.SelectRows(#”Changed Type”, each ([Column1] null)),
#”Removed Columns” = Table.RemoveColumns(#”Filtered Rows”,{“Column2″})
in
#”Removed Columns”
—————————————————————————-
let
Source = Excel.CurrentWorkbook(){[Name=”LINKS”]}[Content],
#”Changed Type” = Table.TransformColumnTypes(Source,{{“URL”, type text}}),
#”Added Custom” = Table.AddColumn(#”Changed Type”, “Fetchdata”, each Companies([URL])),
#”Expanded Fetchdata” = Table.ExpandTableColumn(#”Added Custom”, “Fetchdata”, {“Column1”, “Column3”}, {“Column1”, “Column3″})
in
#”Expanded Fetchdata”
———————————————————————————
to import data from the web page but it imports companies names only not link address
want to insert a new column and get the link address to get the profile of each company .
Thank You
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This is awesome! Thanks
Hello Chris!
My example its in a Space Missions website (https://nextspaceflight.com/).
In each page https://nextspaceflight.com/launches/past/?page=1 there are 30 launches (max) and each has 1 button called “details” that leads to another page, for example:
Page 1, the 1st launch (at the moment) Antares 230+ | CRS NG-14 on the details button leads to https://nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/2614 with alot of details about the mission.
How can I get this link to PowerQuery? It doesn’t work with
{
“Link”,
“a[href^=””http””]”,
each [Attributes][href]}
because it is a buttoon? I tried replacing “href” with “onclick” or “location.href” but it is not working.
What I want to do, is it possible? And to get all the 30 links from the 30 launches that are displayed in each of the pages? I already know how to get the bulk of the 152 pages but I am missing getting the details of the missions :(((((((
Thank you! 😀
let
Source = Web.BrowserContents(“https://www.law360.com/compliance/news?page=2″),
#”Extracted Table From Html” = Html.Table(Source, {{“Column1”, “.updated”}, {“Column2”, “H3 *”}, {“Column3”, “.col-md-8 .entry-content”}, {“Column4”, “:not(*)”}}, [RowSelector=”.col-md-8 .hnews”]),
#”Changed Type” = Table.TransformColumnTypes(#”Extracted Table From Html”,{{“Column1”, type date}, {“Column2”, type text}, {“Column3”, type text}, {“Column4″, type text}})
in
#”Changed Type”
I am trying to scrape data from the above website but the given instruction by Chris didn’t work for me.
I don’t know if I’m doing it right but would anyone help me on to how get the related URL link in front of every line of the news title ?
Also, I may want to get more than one page news, so I would be very grateful as well, if you help me on how to get or iterate to the next page of the web in Power bi.
Thank you
Mohamed