topic Re: Weekly Exercise 40: DataPrep Parsing HTML to extract Dr. Names (Advanced) in Weekly Challenges

Challenge #40: Parsing a HTML File

GeneR — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 17:01:15 GMT

Happy Monday… oh wait it's Tuesday already. Sorry for the delay if you are an international Alteryx community member, yesterday the USA and Canada celebrated Labor Day in honor of working people.

Hopefully everyone had fun debugging the Macro last week, the link to the solution for that challenge (#39) is HERE. For this week we look at what needs to be done to process raw HTML data after using the download tool to scrape the web.

One of the features of the Alteryx download tool is that it can pull down the raw HTML code from a web page. This practice sometimes referred to as web scraping is useful when there is embedded data in the page you want to access from Alteryx. The challenge is that the raw HTML needs to parsed to prepare the data for use.

Use case: 5280 Magazine in Denver published a list of the best doctors in the Denver metro area, you need to download that list in database form. (Note the Raw HTML has been provided in the workflow)

Objective: Parse the HTML into a database format containing fields for the ID, Physician, Address, City and Practice

Good luck, I hope you are having fun with these challenges and expanding your knowledge of Alteryx. Thanks to all that participate and have provided feedback.

Re: Weekly Exercise #40: Data Prep HTML Parsing Dr. Names (Intermediate)

MattD — Mon, 12 Sep 2016 14:21:14 GMT

Here's a solution:

Re: Weekly Exercise #40: Data Prep HTML Parsing Dr. Names (Intermediate)

brianprestidge — Wed, 05 Oct 2016 17:10:12 GMT

My Solution (I Reg-ex'd the **** out of it!) :-)

FYI - ID 649 was wrong in the provided output solution as the Practice was in the City field:

PS. Loving These Challenges - Keep Em Coming!

My Solution

Re: Weekly Exercise 40: DataPrep Parsing HTML to extract Dr. Names (Advanced)

brianprestidge — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 18:56:35 GMT

Hello My Alteryx Friends....

Is this not the same challenge as Week 40 or am i missing something?

Week 40: http://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Knowledge-Base/Weekly-Exercise-40-Data-Prep-HTML-Parsing-Dr-Names-Intermediate/ta-p/32333

Re: Weekly Exercise 45: DataPrep Parsing HTML to extract Dr. Names (Advanced)

GeneR — Wed, 12 Oct 2016 13:49:59 GMT

@brianprestidge you're not missing anything, I must have liked that one so much I posted it twice. I will make sure I have something original for next Monday. Thanks for playing along and keeping us honest!

Re: Weekly Exercise 45: DataPrep Parsing HTML to extract Dr. Names (Advanced)

brianprestidge — Wed, 12 Oct 2016 14:37:15 GMT

Haha - My pleasure!

I agree, it was a good one so why not do it again!! :-)

Re: Weekly Exercise 40: DataPrep Parsing HTML to extract Dr. Names (Advanced)

TaraM — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 18:56:54 GMT

A solution has been posted

Re: Weekly Exercise 40: DataPrep Parsing HTML to extract Dr. Names (Advanced)

Joe_Mako — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 18:57:09 GMT

I saw this in another thread, you can find my attached workbook at:
http://community.alteryx.com/t5/Dublin-IRL/Weekly-Exercise-9/gpm-p/36238#M47

Here are three points on the differences between your output and what I came up with:

1. You have an issue with a character encoding in your output
My Results:
493 Yuko Kitahama-D'Ambrosia Denver 4500 E. Ninth Ave., Suite 200 Obstetrics and Gynecology
Your Results:
493 Yuko Kitahama-D'Ambrosia 4500 E. Ninth Ave., Suite 200 Denver Obstetrics and Gynecology

2. For Jesse Mills, the "(..)" text is in the span tag, and in all others the span tag contains the address, but your output has that text in the city field, and then the Practice in the City.
My Results:
649 Jesse Mills (No longer practicing in the Denver area) Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility [Null]
Your Results:
649 Jesse Mills [Null] (No longer practicing in the Denver area) Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility

3. 51 physicians have multiple practices, for example, Reginald Bell. Your results only kept the first. I outputted it as a comma separated list in the field.

Re: Weekly Exercise 40: DataPrep Parsing HTML to extract Dr. Names (Advanced)

GeneR — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 18:57:36 GMT

Nice! @Joe_Mako

Thanks!

Re: Weekly Exercise 40: DataPrep Parsing HTML to extract Dr. Names (Advanced)

SeanAdams — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 05:50:26 GMT

I found the same as @Joe_Mako - row 649 in the provided solution has some data corruption.

For @GeneR & @TaraM - for some reason the raw-data for this exercise seems to have dropped of the posting, but it is still available on the link to the Dublin User Group that @Joe_Mako provided below - would you mind adding this to the original challenge posting so that the folk who try this have the data set to work with?

Finally - I felt a little silly when I looked at the posted solution from @TaraM which uses the natural tags to split the data - clearly I did this the hard way.

Have a good weekend all

Sean

Re: Challenge #40: Parsing a HTML File

NicoleJohnson — Wed, 12 Apr 2017 05:33:03 GMT

My solution. I was feeling pretty snazzy with all my new tips & tricks for RegEx (thanks for the links, @SeanAdams!)... only to realize with this challenge that I also know next to nothing about XML parsing. But a few searches later and I figured it out enough to fumble my way through this one... I'm finding all sorts of new tools with these challenges that I'll never ever use at work. :)

Re: Challenge #40: Parsing a HTML File

JoeM — Tue, 02 May 2017 14:32:24 GMT

Some of the data was reported missing but has now been added to the original post!

Re: Challenge #40: Parsing a HTML File

estherb47 — Tue, 02 May 2017 16:59:21 GMT

Thanks for including the data!

Do I get bonus point for fewest tools used? First picture is a solution with RegEx parsing. 7 tools! I'm not counting the browse ;)

Second solution is with formulas/cross tab/text to columns

Spoilers

Re: Challenge #40: Parsing a HTML File

LordNeilLord — Fri, 26 May 2017 07:15:13 GMT

Took me ages to get the right parse going but once I had it I was on a roll..

Re: Challenge #40: Parsing a HTML File

SeanAdams — Tue, 30 May 2017 02:08:11 GMT

best hint I ever got on regex came from Mark ( @MarqueeCrew )

The tip is that http://regex101.com allows you to play with Regex phrases in real time, and it's a really easy way to learn and practice. I now use it for all my regex work, especially web-scraping!

Have a look - it really is a fantastic site, and if Alteryx could build something similar into the product, it would be legendary!

Re: Challenge #40: Parsing a HTML File

MsBindy — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 16:34:10 GMT

Whoops....put it on the wrong week. This is week 41 solution.

Re: Challenge #40: Parsing a HTML File

patrick_digan — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 01:44:02 GMT

HTML parsing is just another excuse to use James' XML input tool to parse everything.

Re: Challenge #40: Parsing a HTML File

A_Twa — Fri, 06 Oct 2017 20:40:39 GMT

Solution attached.

Re: Challenge #40: Parsing a HTML File

dominiklz — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 08:35:58 GMT

Re: Challenge #40: Parsing a HTML File

JoshKushner — Fri, 10 Nov 2017 07:33:06 GMT

On Challenge #1, Regex and I HATED each other. Now we're BEST FRIENDS. How did I never use Regex before this. I was wasting so much effort with sub-strings and unnecessary logic...