Is it possible to scroll a google doc using google app script?
I have an app script that searches for all headers in an active doc and creates a table of contents, and now I'd like to link the contents list to the headers as they occur in the doc itself.
I've made this work using jquery in the mozilla rich text editor and it's very handy.
Thanks.
It is possible now with setSelection() method
https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/document/document#setselectionrange
There is also NamedRange entity that we can create on a document for later retrieval
No, unfortunately it's not currently possible to control the scroll or cursor position within a document. See our support page for information on how to file feature requests: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/support
Related
I am trying to import data from the following website to Google Sheets. I want to import all the matches for the day.
https://www.tournamentsoftware.com/tournament/b731fdcd-a0c8-4558-9344-2a14c267ee8b/Matches
I have tried importxml and importhtml, but it seems this does not work as the website uses JavaScript. I have also tried to use Apipheny without any success.
When using Apipheny, the error message is
'Failed to fetch data - please verify your API Request: {DNS error'
Tl;Dr
Adapted from my answer to How to know if Google Sheets IMPORTDATA, IMPORTFEED, IMPORTHTML or IMPORTXML functions are able to get data from a resource hosted on a website? (also posted by me)
Please spend some time learning how to use the browsers developers tools so you will be able to identify
if the data is already included in source code of the webpage as JSON / literal JavaScript object or in another form
if the webpage is doing a GET or POST requests to retrieve the data and when those requests are done (i.e. as some point of the page parsing, or on event)
if the requests require data from cookies
Brief guide about how to use the web browser to find useful details about the webpage / data to import
Open the source code and look if the required data is included. Sometimes the data is included as JSON and added to the DOM using JavaScript. In this case it might be possible to retrieve the data by using the Google Sheets functions or URL Fetch Service from Google Apps Script.
Let say that you use Chrome. Open the Dev Tools, then look at the Elements tab. There you will see the DOM. It might be helpful to identify if the data that you want to import besides being on visible elements is included in hidden / not visible elements like <script> tags.
Look at Source, there you might be able to see the JavaScript code. It might include the data that you want to import as JavaScript object (commonly referred as JSON).
There are a lot of questions about google-sheets +web-scraping that mentions problems using importhtml and/or importxml that already have answers and even many include code (JavaScript snippets, Google Apps Script functions, etc.) that might save you to have to use an specialized web-scraping tool that has a more stepped learning curve. At the bottom of this answer there is a list of questions about using Google Sheets built-in functions, including annotations of the workaround proposed.
On Is there a way to get a single response from a text/event-stream without using event listeners? ask about using EventSource. While this can't be used on server side code, the answer show how to use the HtmlService to use it on client-side code and retrieve the result to Google Sheets.
As you already realized, the Google Sheets built-in functions importhtml(), importxml(), importdata() and importfeed() only work with static pages that do not require signing in or other forms of authentication.
When the content of a public page is created dynamically by using JavaScript, it cannot be accessed with those functions, by the other hand the website's webmaster may also purposefully have prevented web scraping.
How to identify if content is added dynamically
To check if the content is added dynamically, using Chrome,
Open the URL of the source data.
Press F12 to open Chrome Developer Tools
Press Control+Shift+P to open the Command Menu.
Start typing javascript, select Disable JavaScript, and then press Enter to run the command. JavaScript is now disabled.
JavaScript will remain disabled in this tab so long as you have DevTools open.
Reload the page to see if the content that you want to import is shown, if it's shown it could be imported by using Google Sheets built-in functions, otherwise it's not possible but might be possible by using other means for doing web scraping.
According to Wikipedia,
Web scraping, web harvesting, or web data extraction is data scraping used for extracting data from websites.
Use of robots.txt to block Web crawlers
The webmasters could use robots.txt file to block access to website. In such case the result will be #N/A Could not fetch URL.
Use of User agent
The webpage could be designed to return a special a custom message instead of the data.
Below there are more details about how Google Sheets built-in "web-scraping" functions works
IMPORTDATA, IMPORTFEED, IMPORTHTML and IMPORTXML are able to get content from resources hosted on websites that are:
Publicly available. This means that the resource doesn't require authorization / to be logged in into any service to access it.
The content is "static". This mean that if you open the resource using the view source code option of modern web browsers it will be displayed as plain text.
NOTE: The Chrome's Inspect tool shows the parsed DOM; in other works the actual structure/content of the web page which could be dynamically modified by JavaScript code or browser extensions/plugins.
The content has the appropriated structure.
IMPORTDATA works with structured content as csv or tsv doesn't matter of the file extension of the resource.
IMPORTFEED works with marked up content as ATOM/RSS
IMPORTHTML works with marked up content as HTML that includes properly markedup list or tables.
IMPORTXML works with marked up content as XML or any of its variants like XHTML.
The content doesn't exceeds the maximum size. Google haven't disclosed this limit but the below error will be shown when the content exceeds the maximum size:
Resource at url contents exceeded maximum size.
Google servers are not blocked by means of robots.txt or the user agent.
On W3C Markup Validator there are several tools to checkout is the resources had been properly marked up.
Regarding CSV check out Are there known services to validate CSV files
It's worth to note that the spreadsheet
should have enough room for the imported content; Google Sheets has a 10 million cell limit by spreadsheet, according to this post a columns limit of 18278, and a 50 thousand characters as cell content even as a value or formula.
it doesn't handle well large in-cell content; the "limit" depends on the user screen size and resolution as now it's possible to zoom in/out.
References
https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/javascript/disable
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping
Related
Using Google Apps Script to scrape Dynamic Web Pages
Scraping data from website using vba
Block Website Scraping by Google Docs
Is there a way to get a single response from a text/event-stream without using event listeners?
Software Recommendations
Web scraping tool/software available for free?
Recommendations for web scraping tools that require minimal installation
Web Applications
The following question is about a different result, #N/A Could not fetch URL
Inability to use IMPORTHTML in Google sheets
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One of the answers includes Google Apps Script code to get data from a JSON source. As of January 4th 2023, it's not longer working, very likely because Yahoo! Finance is now encrying the JSON. See the Tainake's answer to How to pull Yahoo Finance Historical Price Data from its Object with Google Apps Script? for script using Crypto.js to handle this.
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One answer suggest to read the data from the server instead of scraping from a webpage.
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One answer suggest the use of an API and Google Apps Script
ImportXML is good for basic tasks, but it won't get you too far if you are serious in scraping:
The approach only works with the most basic websites (no SPAs rendered in browsers can be scraped this way. Any basic web scraping protection or connectivity issue breaks the process, and there isn't any control over HTTP request geo location, or number of retries) - and Yahoo Finance is not a simple website
If the target website data requires some cleanup post-processing, it's getting very complicated since you are now "programming with Excel formulas", rather a painful process compared to regular code writing in conventional programming languages
There isn't any proper launch and cache control, so the function can be triggered occasionally and if the HTTP request fails, cells will be populated with ERR! values
I recommend using proper tools (automation framework and scraping engine which can render JavaScript-powered websites) and use Google Sheets just for basic storage purposes:
https://youtu.be/uBC752CWTew (Pipedream for automation and ScrapeNinja engine for scraping)
Typically, if it were a regular page-by-page website, I would install the analytics javascript before the body tag.
But, with a site where content is on overlays, how can analytics be installed to track views? (i.e. a one page portfolio site)
Thanks for any insight!
See Tracking Google Analytics Page Views with Angular.js. Even though I'm not sure if you are using something like Angular or just straight javascript, you could use a similar technique described there with hash urls that are set when a user clicks on a different part of the page, that way you could track how a user interacts with your single page site by making different urls for their interactions.
For more information see Pushing Functions onto the Queue.
In javascript that calls the overlay, you can add:
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/url/of/page']);
or:
ga('send','pageview','/url/of/page');
I would like to use the GSA API to read and write the Dynamic Navigation settings. From the API documentation, it looks like this isn't possible. Screen scraping is another option, but most of the page content is built client-side with JavaScript, which makes normal command-line screen scraping very difficult.
Is there an undocumented feature of the API perhaps, or some other way to access settings that aren't covered in the API?
The unofficial gsa-admin-toolkit project has a gsa_admin.py script which can import and export configuration files, and, most importantly, re-sign them. Before, editing an exported config file wasn't an option because they contain a checksum or hash. They get corrupted when edited.
This tool allows editing of the config file, re-signing, and importing back to the GSA.
I need to create a application which receives a lotus note document file . Is it possible to retrieve Lotus notes rich text without using Lotus notes api?
You also can get rich text via http/https, using web API. HTTP task should be turned on to use this method.
Just use a request as follows:
server/databasefilepath/databasename/viewname/selectionkey/richtextitemname?OpenField
This will return you rich text item, transformed into html, that is realy userful.
Yes you can by using Domino XML Language (DXL). This renders an XML style format that you can then work through however it is complex if the user has added lots of bullet points, bolding the odd image etc.
You will have to use CreateDXLExporter() either in your app or rendered via web from a notes agent however once you have built it, each document will be available to you and in fact the entire database.
HTH
If you can't use HTTP task as shiv suggested, you can try this tool by Julian Robichaux http://www.nsftools.com/tips/NotesTips.htm#richtexttohtml.
Notes from the author:
This database has a script library that describes a technique allowing
you to get the contents of a regular Rich Text field as MIME/HTML,
even if that field isn't set to store contents as MIME.
Currently I am implementing .NET Google API to display Google Docs in my ASP.NET web application and I want to fetch the extension and size of Google Document, I got a way to get the extension by sub-scripting the Title of the Document from last index of "." but in case of spreadsheet it can be possible as it just contains the name of the spreadsheet document.
Please provide your suggestion here!!
Also, it would be better if you can provide source in C#!!
thanks!
You can use the Google Drive API to retrieve documents stored on Google Drive and check their metadata, including fileExtension, fileSize and many others:
https://developers.google.com/drive/v2/reference/files
All methods have .NET samples and there's also a complete ASP.NET MVC application that you canuse to get started:
https://developers.google.com/drive/examples/dotnet