Adding manual data to the database

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yeti
Posts: 22
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 1:01 am

Adding manual data to the database

Post by yeti » Sat Feb 02, 2013 1:13 am

Hi there.

I am currently trialing Helium. So far so good I am just getting my head around some of the advanced features in order to get the results I want.

One thing I would like to do...

The import file that I wish to use requires 2 columns that I cannot pull from the website. One is a name and the other is a category.

I am happy to add a fixed 'name' and 'category' for each result manually. Is there a way to do this? Just to clarify, I mean every row will have the same name and category text that is configured to enter manually and not scraped from the page? e.g:

id / title / price / category / name
1 / great product / 12.50 / sports / John Smith
2 / another item / 35.90 / sports / John Smith

Thanks for any help.
Craig

yeti
Posts: 22
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 1:01 am

Re: Adding manual data to the database

Post by yeti » Sat Feb 02, 2013 2:46 am

I should probably also add that when I say 'import file' I mean for importing into a different application.

I am looking to export the Helium results into a CSV which I am then importing into something else.

Thanks.

webmaster
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Joined: Mon Dec 06, 2010 8:39 am
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Re: Adding manual data to the database

Post by webmaster » Sat Feb 02, 2013 4:44 pm

Hi,

What you can do is create variables for the name and one for the category at Project -> Variables, say you create one called Category and one called Name, then assign to the Category variable the value "sports" and to the Name variable the value "John Smith". Then on your Extract action, extract the VAR_Name property of the BODY kind and the VAR_Category property of the BODY kind. Note that you can also edit the data table just by typing in it and then pressing the Save changes button in the data table editor.
Juan Soldi
The Helium Scraper Team

yeti
Posts: 22
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 1:01 am

Re: Adding manual data to the database

Post by yeti » Sun Feb 03, 2013 2:23 am

Thanks very much for your help. I will give it a go. I managed a workaround by finding 2 separate common entities on each page, then used the 'Text Gatherer' > 'replace' function to replace the text with the data I needed. Seems to work well, however your suggestion sounds better.

I will update if I need any further help.

Thanks again!

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