Data table sources with multiple pagination
October 21, 2010 9:47 PM Subscribe
i need to gather data from paginated tables and return them as a feed or something that can be easily pulled as a query into excel.
Here's the first example of a page I'm having problems with. I only need to save the coupons, on all pages:
http://print.coupons.com/Couponweb/Index.aspx?pid=13306&%3bzid=iq37&%3bnid=10&%3bbid=alk1021211002f0520f9a58012
I could copy and paste and reformat, but that's the fun in that. I'm trying to write this query to update and refresh in Excel.
They do have an RSS feed, but it only brings 100 records. Today's list is showing 238 coupons. I need the text and other info from them into cells in Excel.
Sorry for the rambling, it's just hard to put it into words. I've had luck with other sources, but this one is giving me a hard time.
Here's the first example of a page I'm having problems with. I only need to save the coupons, on all pages:
http://print.coupons.com/Couponweb/Index.aspx?pid=13306&%3bzid=iq37&%3bnid=10&%3bbid=alk1021211002f0520f9a58012
I could copy and paste and reformat, but that's the fun in that. I'm trying to write this query to update and refresh in Excel.
They do have an RSS feed, but it only brings 100 records. Today's list is showing 238 coupons. I need the text and other info from them into cells in Excel.
Sorry for the rambling, it's just hard to put it into words. I've had luck with other sources, but this one is giving me a hard time.
Sorry, but why are you using Excel? Excel is not a database. Don't use Excel. Excel make programmer so angry! Programmer smash!
Ok, uh, sorry. Use um, wget. Or curl. Or better yet, something like Python's urllib2. This is a programming project, and the further down the road you go with some hacked up Excel spreadsheet and an RSS feed, the more kludgy it is going to get.
posted by sophist at 11:09 PM on October 21, 2010
Ok, uh, sorry. Use um, wget. Or curl. Or better yet, something like Python's urllib2. This is a programming project, and the further down the road you go with some hacked up Excel spreadsheet and an RSS feed, the more kludgy it is going to get.
posted by sophist at 11:09 PM on October 21, 2010
Sorry, maybe that was too harsh. If you already have something to parse the RSS and put it into the spreadsheet, why not just monitor the RSS feed for items as they come in?
posted by sophist at 11:17 PM on October 21, 2010
posted by sophist at 11:17 PM on October 21, 2010
Response by poster: Thanks guys for the info so far. Sophist, my apologies for not giving more info. I'm totally with you on the Excel is not a database comment!
What I left out is that this is for a benchmarking analysis. This isn't the only site that I have to tally up, and I'd rather not copy and paste all of this weekly, let alone go from page to page and repeat.
So this is just for a report, which is why it ends up in Excel so that I can manipulate some info. Also, Excel is all I have to work with on my company computer at the moment.
posted by malcommc at 5:41 AM on October 22, 2010
What I left out is that this is for a benchmarking analysis. This isn't the only site that I have to tally up, and I'd rather not copy and paste all of this weekly, let alone go from page to page and repeat.
So this is just for a report, which is why it ends up in Excel so that I can manipulate some info. Also, Excel is all I have to work with on my company computer at the moment.
posted by malcommc at 5:41 AM on October 22, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by demiurge at 9:55 PM on October 21, 2010