Output Data Table - setting Output Property

Help
1

I’m trying to build a table dynamically using screen scraping and when I selected the range, I dragged and dropped the Output Data Table activity and I set the Output property as ExtractDataTable - which is the name of the variable it created.

value of type system.data.datatable cannot be converted to string

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Weirdly, the book I’m using to learn set to set the output data activity as ExtractedDataTable:

2

Hi Steve,

I believe ExtractDataTable will need to be the Input property for the Output data table command. For the Output property you will need to use variable that is type String, perhaps your existing result variable. You can then display the string variable in your message box command.

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3

What martinw3 said is correct Steve.

Think of it like this:

You’re building your data table with data scraping, and its just sitting there all structured and nice.

Output converts the data table into a easily displayable format (a string).

So your inputting your data table into the ‘input’ activity to convert it to a string, and the text output is where your newly converted data table sits.

Even after using output data table, you can still use the original data table variable ‘ExtractDataTable’ to play with the data after you’ve visualised it through output data table activity.

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Thanks guys. I did set the Input of the output data table as ‘ExtractDataTable’

Then within the same activity (output data table), I set output as ‘result’

Then set the message box activity to recall the ‘result’ variable.

But when I hit run and it finishes, a message box just pops up saying ‘result’ :confused:

any ideas guys? awesome help as always. With every reply I get, I’m trying to understand the fundamentals so I don’t keep on asking. :slight_smile:

5

When you placed the result variable in the message box did you use quotations or no quotations?

“result” will output “result”
result will output whatever is stored in the variable.

If it still shows “result” then that is what is being extracted by the Extract Structured Data (or should be).

Screenshots might be more helpful if you need further help.

Regards.

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This will output “hello world” or whatever is stored in your variable

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will output “result”