How to read an HTML table?
About
This Howto shows you how to read a HTML table from a html page.
Steps
By Default, the first table
By default, an HTML resource will return the first HTML table found.
Example: the first table of the Eurovision country with the data data head command
tabul data head https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_in_the_Eurovision_Song_Contest
The first 10 rows of the data resource (List_of_countries_in_the_Eurovision_Song_Contest@https-en.wikipedia.org\wiki):
1 2
- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
† Inactive – countries which participated in the past but did not appear in the most recent contest, or will not appear in the upcoming contest
◇ Ineligible – countries whose broadcasters are no longer part of the EBU and are therefore ineligible to participate
‡ Former – countries which previously participated but no longer exist
How to specify a table with the CSS selector
The HTML resource allows you to specify the CSS selectors used via attributes
- for the table: table-selector
- for the headers inside the table
- etc …
Example with the first countries in the Eurovision Song Contest. were we specify the table-selector
With this css selector, we get the second table:
tabul data head \
-a 'table-selector=table:nth-of-type(2)' \
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_in_the_Eurovision_Song_Contest
The first 10 rows of the data resource (List_of_countries_in_the_Eurovision_Song_Contest@https-en.wikipedia.org\wiki):
Country Broadcaster(s)[14] Debut year Latest entry Entries Finals Qualifying[b] Latest final Best placement Wins
------------------------ ------------------ ---------- ------------ ------- ------ ------------- ------------ -------------- ---------
Albania RTSH 2004 2025 21 12 11/20 55% 2025 5th
Andorra † RTVA 2004 2009 6 0 0/6 0% N/A 12th (SF)
Armenia AMPTV 2006 2025 17 14 13/16 81% 2025 4th
Australia SBS 2015 2025 10 7 6/9 67% 2023 2nd
Austria ORF 1957 2025 57 50 8/15 53% 2025 1st
Azerbaijan İTV 2008 2025 17 13 12/16 75% 2022 1st
Belarus ◇ BTRC 2004 2019 16 6 6/16 38% 2019 6th
Belgium[d] RTBF[f] / VRT[g] 1956 2025 66 54 8/20 40% 2023 1st
Bosnia and Herzegovina † BHRT[h] 1993 2016 19 18 7/8 88% 2012 3rd
How to get a Table CSS selector?
The easiest way to get a CSS selector is to use the Browser Dev Tool
- Click on the F12 key, the Browser Dev Tool should open
- Click on the Elements tab
- Click on the Select an element tool (normally an arrow in the top left corner)
- Select the top left element of your table on your HTML page
- Right Click on the table element in the Elements tab of DevTool
- And select copy selector
Note that this derived CSS selector is pretty sensible to any HTML structure change.