with html at the end of link. More script errors and locking up
OK, maybe my EXCEL is too dated to capture this date (EXCEL - 2007) so I try to extract the data using Google sheets and the IMPORTHTML or the IMPORTXML
Watched some tutorials on Youtube for help on these functions, which helped just a little.
The only thing I can think of is the PGATour is not setting up this data in a conventional table.
FWIW, I have successfully extracted data from other parts of the PGATour portal using EXCEL web queries and google IMPORTHTML. Like this page.
FTR, the two pages that are troublesome are pages designed to continuously update, while the third link is updated once a week. Not sure if that makes a difference.
You’re stuck with those first two. Excel web query (at least back in 2007) is designed to parse plain old HTML pages that contain all the info statically.
Those pages are all the new modern kind where the page itself contains nothing but the graphical outline of the page and a program written in JavaScript that separately loads and displays the data you want. Excel totally can’t handle that.
The third page is better; the raw data is in there. But lots of the page is also designed to be script-operated and to fail if the script isn’t there. So Excel might be able to get you some data, but only after lots of fighting.
Your best bet (and it’s not a good one) is take your browser, switch off or block all scripting of any kind, then go hunting around the internet to try to find a page that will still display the info you hope to scrape off of it.
Good luck. I bet you’ll fail. That sort of page design is at least a decade out of date now. A real programmer could reverse engineer the scripting on those pages, or contact pgatour’s app developer interface people to find out how to obtain the data the way their server wants to provide it.
The fact you’re asking these questions says you’re not that person and it’s not something that can be taught over a messageboard. Sorry to be the bearer of unhappy news.
There might be some better point and click tools for data scraping these kinds of modern script-driven sites. There’s certainly a desire for it. I’m enough out of the biz now that I can’t offer any suggestions. Anyone?
LSLGuy, Thank you for the reply. And you are absolutely correct, I am a novice when it comes to programming.
My current laptop will need replacing soon, and I have thought upgrading my microsoft Office package to the latest version at that time. Would that help? The fact that Google spreadsheet can’t import the data suggests that it won’t help.
I have been able to data-mine the info that is presented like the third page. Using visual basic macros and the scripting errors do not show up.