Tuesday, 28 May 2013

Extract Real Estate Property information from a Website and keep your database up-to-date

Task Description
Extract Real Estate Property information and keep your database up-to-date.

Note: This sample task uses an example of http://www.bytheowner.com just for illustrative purposes.

Test File T65.atmn

Note: Save the .atmn file in My Documents -> Automation Anywhere -> Automation Anywhere -> My Tasks

Solution
1 Record a new task
- Click on Web Record link.
- Specify URL, http://www.bytheowner.com/search.php?topic=advanced and click on Start button.
- From Cities section, select the desired state and region from respective drop-down
- Click on ‘Search’ button.
- Click on 'Extract Data' button in the Web Recorder toolbar.
- From Extract Data Option window, select 'Pattern Based Data' option and click on 'Next' button to start 'Extract Multiple Data' wizard.
- Step1 of wizard is to select the fields you need to extract. Click on 'Add' button and capture the field you need to extract. You will be presented with a small window having 'Capture' button. Click on that 'Capture' button to capture another instance of same field in order to match the pattern. Specify the Column Name and the action in 'Extract Data Field' window. Similarly, add number of fields you want to extract data from.
- After you captured all the fields, click on 'Next' link. In Step2, you can specify if data is in multiple pages and using 'Capture' button capture the button or link that loads the next page. Click on Next button.
- In Step3, specify the CSV file path where you need to store the extracted data. Also, if you have captured the image in Step1 then specify the folder name where you need to download the images.
- You can view the data using 'Preview Data' button. Eventually, click on Finish button to complete the wizard
- Stop the recording and save the task.


2 Create the list of regions or cities
- Open your task and click on Variable Manager Tab.
- Populate default variable $my-list-variable$ with list of cities or regions and save it.

3 Extract information for the list of cities
- The recorded task will extract the information for one city.
- To make your task extract the information for the list of cities, modify the recorded task a little
- Select the task and click on 'Edit' to open it in editor
- Insert a Loop for List Variable around the recorded action. You have to Loop for the list of values present in $my-list-variable$. You need to start this loop before you enter the city or region.
- Double-click on command that selects the city or region. Now, replace actual city with the list variable $my-list-variable$ and save the command.

4 How to run the task
- In case you do not have Automation Anywhere installed, please download and install it from, http://www.automationanywhere.com/download/freeTrial.htm.
- Save T65.atmn under location, My Documents\Automation Anywhere\Automation Anywhere\My Tasks
- Launch Automation Anywhere and from Task List select T65.atmn and click on RUN button to run the task.

Source: http://www.automationanywhere.com/solutions/ST/T65.htm

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