htmltab2stata
Loading html tables into Stata.
Table of Contents
1. Syntax
The general syntax is:
htmltab2stata , url(_url_) [tablenumber(_integer_) firstrow href]
2. Options
url(url) the url of the html website to be processed. The url has to be a downloadable html website. url can be a web address or a local html file.
tablenumber(integer) number of table within the html document. Default is 1, i.e. the first table is processed.
firstrow Use firstrow of table as variable names.
href Links enclosed in <a href=....></a> are added to the content transferred to Stata.
3. Description
htmltab2stata parses html code from websites. It detects tables enclosed with the html <table> environment and transforms the table into a Stata dataset. To do so, htmltab2stata parses the html code and uses <tr> as row identifiers and code enclosed in <td> as columns. It only transfers content which is not enclosed in < > to Stata, unless option href is used for links. Empty cells remain empty in the Stata dataset.
4. Examples
For all examples, the following table in html code saved in table.html is processed:
Content
Table 1
<table>
<tr><th>Country</th><th>Population</th><th>GDP</th></tr>
<tr><td>Country A</td><td>10</td><td>100</td></tr>
<tr><td>Country B</td><td>20</td><td>5</td></tr>
<tr><td>Country C</td><td>500</td><td>10</td></tr>
</table>
More Content
Table 2
<table>
<tr><th>Firstname</th><th>Surname</th><th>Webpage</th></tr>
<tr><td>Adam</td><td>Smith</td><td>none</td></tr>
<tr><td>Allan</td><td>Richards</td><td><a href="www.google.com">webpage</a></td></tr>
<tr><td>Richard</td><td>Johnson</td><td></td></tr>
</table>
Loading Table into Stata as a dataset:
htmltab2stata , url(table.html)
Returns:
.list
+---------------------------------+
| myvar1 myvar2 myvar3 |
|---------------------------------|
1. | Country Population GDP |
2. | Country A 10 100 |
3. | Country B 20 5 |
4. | Country C 500 10 |
+---------------------------------+
To use the first column as variable names the option firstrow is required.
htmltab2stata , url(table.html) firstrow
.list
+----------------------------+
| Country Popula~n GDP |
|----------------------------|
1. | Country A 10 100 |
2. | Country B 20 5 |
3. | Country C 500 10 |
+----------------------------+
To process Table 2, use the first row as variable names and add the url of the hyperlink as text to the contents:
stata htmltab2stata , url(table.html) firstrow tablenumber(2) href
. list
+----------------------------------------------+
| Firstn~e Surname Webpage |
|----------------------------------------------|
1. | Adam Smith none |
2. | Allan Richards www.google.com webpage |
3. | Richard Johnson |
+----------------------------------------------+
5. How to install
In Stata:
net install htmltab2stata, from(https://janditzen.github.io/htmltab2stata/)
6. About
Jan Ditzen
Email: jan.ditzen@unibz.it
Web: www.jan.ditzen.net
This version: 1.0