Overview
B4P provides various means to download files, load data from different sources.
- table load() for loading files in basic formats like text, CSV, HTML, JSON, XML, etc.
- table load excel file() for loading sheets from Excel files
- variable load() for loading hierarchically structured JSON data into a structured B4P variable.
The Internet contains rich information sources which could be useful for data processing needs. Only two function calls are needed to retrieve tables from the web:
- file download() and file download overwrite() -- The latter one allows overwriting existing files.
- table load()
Example with Country Table from Wikipedia
Simple Example
file download overwrite ( "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_3166_country_codes", ISO_Codes.html );
table load ( countries, ISO_Codes.html, HTML, Current ISO 3166 country codes);
table list( countries, briefly, 5, 1st col, 0, last col, 1 ); // List first and last 5 rows and 2 columns onlyOriginal table as retrieved from Wikipedia
0 : ISO 3166[1] name[5] | World Factbook[6] official state name[a]
1 : |
2 : Afghanistan | Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
3 : Åland Islands | Åland
4 : Albania | Republic of Albania
5 : Algeria | People's Democratic Republic of Algeria
... :
268 : Wallis and Futuna | Territory of the Wallis and Futuna Islands
269 : Western Sahara [aj] | Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic
270 : Yemen | Republic of Yemen
271 : Zambia | Republic of Zambia
272 : Zimbabwe | Republic of Zimbabwe
You may notice the following:
- The header row is not in the top.
- Various fields contain references to further literature, e.g. [a], [aa], etc.
- Note the missing space in the entry for Western Saharah. An exotic UNICODE 'hair space' symbol exists inside.
For these reasons above, some initial cleanups are needed which are described on the next page.