How to have null value in data table using data scraping activity

Help Activities
, ,
1

I am using the data scraping activity. I am scraping the data from a website in a table with multiple columns. However, for some columns as there is no value the next columns value comes in place. How can I leave the cell blank in the data table. For example:

website shows:
123 abc boo89
456 hoo78

datatable using the data scraping activity stores it as:
C1 c2 c3
123 abc boo89
456 hoo78

What I want:
C1 C2 C3
123 abc boo89
456 hoo78

How can I fix this issue?

Thank you,

2

in the what I want table there is an empty space under C2 and hoo78 is under C3

3

can you please add screenshots (excel) of the sample output that you are getting through the data scrapping and the correct output that you want
I am not able to understand from the above text , it has got mixed up(formatting errors)

Just for info the following sample code :
< table>
< tr>
< td>aa< /td>
< td>ab< /td>
< td>ac< /td>
< /tr>
< tr>
< td>asa< /td>
< td>asa< /td>
< td>aa< /td>
< /tr>
< /table>

will give you the following table in forum post

aa ab ac
asa asa aa
4

@SSSS_MMMM Loop through each row and if the 3rd column value is empty, then assign the 2nd column value to 3rd col and make 2nd col as empty

Please find the sample workflow below

Example.zip (9.8 KB)

5

Thank you, but I have around 6 columns and it varies sometimes it is column 3, 4 etc this will occur, is there some setting to store values as an empty string and fill in the datatable while extracting the data itself?

6

Thank you
This is what I have:
< table>
< tr>
< td>aa< /td>
< td>ab< /td>
< td>ac< /td>
< /tr>
< tr>
< td>asa< /td>
< td>aa< /td>
< /tr>
< /table>

this is what I want:
< table>
< tr>
< td>aa< /td>
< td>ab< /td>
< td>ac< /td>
< /tr>
< tr>
< td>asa< /td>
< td> < /td>
< td>aa< /td>
< /tr>
< /table>
Hope this helps!
Thank you

7

Hi @SSSS_MMMM ,

Have you tried Extracting Each Column One By One ? You can Check the Below Post on How to do so :

Let us know if you are still facing issues.

8

Hi @supermanPunch I am doing this. However, when there is no value UI Path data table does not store empty values, instead it puts the next columns data in that part. This is what I am having trouble with. For example, the UI Path data scraping activity is supposed to extract 5 data points (let’s say Name, Price, ID, XID, YPrice). We are doing this for around 600 products. However for a few products the XID is not mentioned on the website and the scraper gets a null value or what I am guessing is happening that instead of the XID the YPrice is mentioned and in the XID column it stores the YPrice value. How should I solve this?
In reality I am trying to extract ALL the question and answers for a product on Amazon and am facing this issue as some of the answers have a username and some don’t. Thank you

9

@SSSS_MMMM ,

Do you want to Get the Values from the Page Shown Below :

image
image923×567 48.8 KB

10

Hi, from the questions page on this page. When you click the question it opens a new page

11

@supermanPunch Overall, what I want is question, question date, question votes, all answers to question, answer hellpfullness votes, answer date, answer username. Here is my code:
the issues are:

  1. when a question has no answers the automation just freezes.
  2. it does not extract the user name properly and there is a column and row mismatch
    I have attached my code below. The excel file that I use as input has the product ASIN(product code) and a Link column which has the link to the main product page(not question answer.)
    Ques Ans With Votes Final 24.xlsx (8.5 KB)

Main.xaml (29.7 KB)

  1. Here is what my automation does:
  2. It opens an excel file with product link and ASIN(product ID)
  3. Then from the ASIN number it goes to the main page for that product where it can find all the question and answers
  4. Then it extracts all the question links, votes, question
  5. It then goes on each question link and uses data scraping to get the answers, answer date, answer user name, answer helpfullness
  6. It uses screen scraping for getting the question date
  7. It then adds a column where it adds the question, votes, and question date for the above data(multiple answers) per question
  8. then it sets all the data tables to null
  9. Repeats the process all over again
12

Hi @SSSS_MMMM ,

Apologies for the Late Reply.

Is it possible for you point on which Link/URL the Freezing happened ?