- Release Notes
- Getting Started
- Setup and Configuration
- Automation Projects
- Dependencies
- Types of Workflows
- File Comparison
- Automation Best Practices
- Source Control Integration
- Debugging
- The Diagnostic Tool
- Variables
- Arguments
- Imported Namespaces
- Trigger-based Attended Automation
- Recording
- UI Elements
- Control Flow
- Selectors
- Object Repository
- Data Scraping
- Image and Text Automation
- Automating Citrix Technologies
- RDP Automation
- Salesforce Automation
- SAP Automation
- VMware Horizon Automation
- Logging
- The ScreenScrapeJavaSupport Tool
- The WebDriver Protocol
- Test Suite - Studio
- Extensions
- Troubleshooting
- About troubleshooting
- Microsoft App-V support and limitations
- Internet Explorer X64 troubleshooting
- Microsoft Office issues
- Identifying UI elements in PDF with Accessibility options
- Repairing Active Accessibility support
- Automating Applications Running Under a Different Windows User
- Validation of large Windows-legacy projects takes longer than expected
Generating Tables From Unstructured Data
You can also generate tables from unstructured data and store the information in DataTable variables, by using the Screen Scraping Wizard. Variables can then be used further in your automation projects to populate your database, an Excel sheet or many others.
To create your table from unstructured data you can use the following whitespace characters as column and line separators:
- space
- tab
-
newline
Please note that you can use more than one option for each type of separator.
In addition, you can:
- automatically detect column types;
- use the first row as column headers;
- ignore the first column;
- use predefined columns (if they exist).
In the Designer panel, the result of the screen scraping contains the following, in sequential order:
- a Screen Scraping sequence
- an Attach Window or Attach Browser activity
- a Generate Table container
- a Get Full Text, Get Visible Text or Get OCR Text activity, depending on the method used to scrape the unstructured data
-
the Generate Data Table activity for storing the data must be added from the Activities panel.
The following screenshot is an example:
To take advantage of this feature, do the following:
- Open the Screen Scraping Wizard.
-
Point to the information you want to extract, such as a web page or a PDF. A preview of the scraped information is displayed in the wizard.
- Click Copy to Clipboard and then Finish. The data is copied to the clipboard and the auto-generated automation project is displayed in the Designer panel.
- In the Activities panel, search for Generate Data Table activity, drag-and-drop it in the workflow, under the Get Full Text activity.
-
Click on Generate Data Table inside the activity. The Generate Data Table Wizard is displayed, where you can actually start tweaking your soon to be table.
- Select the column and newline separators you want and tweak the rest of the parameters to your liking.
- Click Preview. The Test Preview section is updated, displaying how your data could be arranged.
- Perform steps 4 and 5 until you get the desired outcome.
-
Click OK. The automation project is displayed in the Designer panel.
