Importing data from an ASP page to an excel spreadsheet. - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

John Henry · 10-26-2004, 07:53 AM

I'm trying to make a spreadsheet to automatically monitor the results of a query on espotting.com. I tried using the "Import Web Data" feature, but where I should get result of a search, I get a "Sorry your search returned no results" message.

I think this is happening because it's an asp page: Presumably, Excel only imports according to the URL you give it, rather than taking the data from the page as I had browsed to it. As such, it wouldn't submit a form with the appropriate search query and the page it actually imported from would be as though no search text had been entered, giving the results described above.

Any ideas how I can make it import from the actual search results page?

blandarfleck · 10-28-2004, 02:29 AM

I don't know much about excel, but this should be easy to do in most other languages (Java, Perl etc..). Basically, they would just monitor for changes, then output into a CSV format, or if you were using say VB you could likely write to Excel. Using Java, you could use POI (jakarta.apache.org/poi) to write to an excell document too.

10-26-2004, 07:53 AM	#1 (permalink)
John Henry Addict Location: Grey Britain	Importing data from an ASP page to an excel spreadsheet. I'm trying to make a spreadsheet to automatically monitor the results of a query on espotting.com. I tried using the "Import Web Data" feature, but where I should get result of a search, I get a "Sorry your search returned no results" message. I think this is happening because it's an asp page: Presumably, Excel only imports according to the URL you give it, rather than taking the data from the page as I had browsed to it. As such, it wouldn't submit a form with the appropriate search query and the page it actually imported from would be as though no search text had been entered, giving the results described above. Any ideas how I can make it import from the actual search results page? __________________ "No one was behaving from very Buddhist motives. Then, thought Pigsy, he was hardly a Buddha, nor was he a monkey. Presently, he was a pig spirit changed into a little girl pretending to be a little boy to be offered to a water monster. It was all very simple to a pig spirit."

10-28-2004, 02:29 AM	#2 (permalink)
blandarfleck Upright Location: Tatoine	I don't know much about excel, but this should be easy to do in most other languages (Java, Perl etc..). Basically, they would just monitor for changes, then output into a CSV format, or if you were using say VB you could likely write to Excel. Using Java, you could use POI (jakarta.apache.org/poi) to write to an excell document too.