HTML table downloader
HTML table downloader
TScraper is a Chrome extension for scraping HTML tables from the web and downloading the data to your computer. The downloaded data is in standard comma- or table-separated value format, which you can then import into the spreadsheet application of your choice.
To use it, you need a recent version of the Chrome browser, running on Windows, Mac or Linux. You can find TScraper in the Chrome Web Store.
Once you have installed TScraper from the Chrome Web Store, select and copy the table data you want to download using your system's copy command.
Then click on the TScraper icon in the upper right hand corner of your Chrome browser to bring up the TScraper popup with the data you copied. Select any formatting options you want, and then click the download button. Your data will be in Chrome's download folder, where you can open it with a spreadsheet application such as Excel®.
Select the data in the web page table with your mouse. With your selected data now highlighted, right-click your mouse to bring up a menu. Select "copy" and your data is now visible to TScraper. Alternatively, you can use your computer's copy keyboard shortcut instead of the right-click -- ⌃C on Windows computers, and ⌘C on Mac computers.
There are three main options:
The first option allows you to change how your copied data is delimited. By default, TScraper takes every tab-separated entry and turns that into a cell. If you select "any white space" instead, TScraper will use spaces, tabs, and returns when deciding what to turn into a cell.
The second option lets you fix the number of cells per row. If you leave this entry blank, then TScraper uses returns in the copied data to decide when to start a new row.
The third option allows you to pick an output format for your TScraper download file. By default, the data is in a comma-separated format (CSV), which is widely supported by spreadsheets. You can change this to a tab-separated format (TSV), sometimes called "delimited text files."
There's a fourth option, a button that lets you undo output filtering. More on output filtering (and table editing commands generally) below.
In addition to formatting your table data, sometimes you will want to insert or hide individual cells, rows or columns. TScraper supports this with its table editing commands.
To insert a table cell, select an existing table cell and press the Enter key. A new cell will be created in front of that cell. You can create a new column by selecting a column header cell, and pressing the Enter key. Similarly, you can create a new row by selecting the row header cell, and pressing the Enter key.
You can also hide cells, rows and columns. To hide an existing table cell, select it and press the Delete key. You can hide an entire column by selecting a column header cell and pressing the Delete key. You can hide an entire row by selecting the row header cell and pressing the Delete key.
To undo element hiding, click on the "Clear output filters" button in the options section.
All major spreadsheet programs support importing TScraper data. You can get specific information for Excel® here, Numbers® here, and OpenOffice™ here.
Once you buy TScraper from the Chrome web store, there is nothing else to buy. TScraper has a fully functional free trial version that runs for four days. After that, you will be prompted to go to the Chrome web site and upgrade to the paid version. The paid version costs 99 cents.
When you first run TScraper, it checks the license status in the Chrome web store. To do this, you'll see a popup message from Google asking to allow TScraper to view your Chrome web store apps and extensions.
If you're not already logged into your Chrome browser, Google will ask you to do so before showing the permissions screen. (Hint: you can always manage your logged in status by going to Chrome's settings page at chrome://settings, or by clicking the button on the upper-righthand corner of the Chrome browser.)
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