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          Copytables Simplifies Extracting Tabular Data from Web Pages

   Adam Engst

   On the Web, tables are everywhere. You may not realize how many sites
   rely on tables behind the scenes for their formatting. Useful as they
   are for aligning content and displaying columnar data, tables can cause
   significant frustration if you need to extract data from them. I find
   myself wanting to do this quite often now that I have the open-source
   [1]Copytables. I use the [2]Copytables Chrome extension in Arc, Brave,
   and Google Chrome, but you can also download [3]Copytables for Firefox
   (forked from the Chrome version) and [4]Copytables for Safari. I
   haven't tested those.

   Here's an example of what Copytables makes possible. Earlier this week,
   I wanted to email someone a list of opportunities from the
   volunteer-management tool Helper Helper. To extract the text from the
   table in the Web app's interface without Copytables, I would have to
   select the entire table (below left), copy it, and paste it into BBEdit
   (below right). The results in BBEdit aren't terrible compared to some
   tables I've seen, but I'd still need to delete every other line. That
   would be doable with such a small table, but what if there were
   hundreds of lines or the data didn't break cleanly at line breaks?

   With Copytables in Arc, I instead pressed the Option key to enter
   cell-selecting mode and dragged over the cells in the leftmost column
   to select just them (below left). When I copied and pasted into BBEdit,
   I got exactly what I wanted (below right).

   Another example. I've been in a pitched battle with spambots for the
   last few weeks, and one of my most successful interim defenses has been
   blocking IP ranges. Using Copytables, I can extract hundreds of these
   quickly from the logs of our WordPress security plug-ins. To select the
   contents of a column, I press Command-Option and click the column
   header. Then it's trivial to copy the data into BBEdit for
   manipulation.

   Copytables also enables you to select rows or entire tables. Those
   features aren't as commonly used'they don't even get default keyboard
   shortcuts'so whenever I need them, I open the Copytables window (from
   the Extensions menu in Arc, or by clicking a pinned extension toolbar
   icon in Brave or Google Chrome), click Rows or Tables to enable the
   associated capture mode, and then click to select. If you do use the
   Capture buttons, make sure to disable them when you're done, or certain
   Web apps won't work correctly due to Copytables capturing their clicks.
   To select entire tables more quickly, click the Previous Table or Next
   Table buttons in the Find row.

   The Copy options at the top require more explanation. I haven't needed
   them, but they offer various formats for the copied data, some of which
   could be handy (I'm particularly taken with the options that swap
   columns and rows). Theoretically, you can set one of these options as
   the default to use with Edit > Copy, but that didn't work in my quick
   testing. Stick to the buttons in the Copytables interface.
     * As is: Copy the table as seen on the screen
     * Plain Table: Copy the table without formatting
     * Text: Copy as tab-delimited text
     * Text+Swap: Copy as tab-delimited text, swap columns and rows
     * CSV: Copy as comma-separated text
     * CSV+Swap: Copy as comma-separated text, swap columns and rows
     * HTML+CSS: Copy as HTML source with formatting
     * HTML: Copy as HTML source without formatting
     * Textile: Copy as [5]Textile (text content)
     * Textile+HTML: Copy as Textile (HTML content)

   Copytables has one other clever feature I find handy occasionally: the
   infobox. It's an inset box that shows information about your current
   selection. Consider this table of data about Canadian wildfires from
   2000'2021. When I select the contents of the Area Burned column,
   Copytables displays the blue infobox at the top that counts the number
   of selected cells, calculates the sum and average, and calls out the
   min and max. These simple calculations can preclude the need to move
   data to a spreadsheet.

   If the infobox gets in your way, you can turn it off or have Copytables
   display it in a different corner of the window. To access this and
   other settings, click the Options link in the Copytables window. The
   most useful settings are the modifier keys for click-and-drag selection
   (below). You'll want to adjust these if they conflict with something
   else on your system. The Copytables window also has a Keyboard
   Shortcuts link that provides a browser-wide approach to setting
   keyboard shortcuts for extensions; the Copytables options match the
   Find and Capture buttons in its window.

   Copytables is free, but if you find it useful, you can [6]join me in
   donating to the author, Georg Barikin.

References

   Visible links
   1. https://merribithouse.net/copytables/
   2. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/copytables/ekdpkppgmlalfkphpibadldikjimijon
   3. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/copywebtables/
   4. https://merribithouse.net/copytables/safari/
   5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textile_%28markup_language%29
   6. https://merribithouse.net/copytables/

   Hidden links:
   7. https://tidbits.com/wp/../uploads/2023/08/Without-Copytables.png
   8. https://tidbits.com/wp/../uploads/2023/08/With-Copytables.png
   9. https://tidbits.com/wp/../uploads/2023/08/Copytables-columns.png
  10. https://tidbits.com/wp/../uploads/2023/08/Copytable-interface.png
  11. https://tidbits.com/wp/../uploads/2023/08/Copytables-infobox.png
  12. https://tidbits.com/wp/../uploads/2023/08/Copytables-modifier-keys.png

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