Creating a PDF
Maria creates a PDF from the sales data table in the intranet and sends it out as a company newsletter to ensure that her colleagues look at it.
After all, it would be a shame if no one saw the result of all that copy-pasting!
Maria copies the table into Microsoft Word and exports it to PDF with some additional software. Our robot, instead, will do it all by itself automatically.
We want to turn the table on the left into the PDF on the right:
As always, let's start by adding a new step in our *** Tasks ***
section:
*** Tasks ***
Insert the sales data for the week and export it as a PDF
Open the intranet website
Log in
Download the Excel file
Fill the form using the data from the Excel file
Collect the results
Export the table as a PDF
Then we add a new keyword:
*** Keywords ***
Export the table as a PDF
As always, we plan to do this in steps. (Remember the poor elephant we are eating? ๐)
Our plan for this keyword is:
- we isolate the part of the page that contains the sales table
- we assign the content (HTML markup) of that part of the page to a variable
- we create a PDF with the HTML content of the table.
Getting the HTML table element out of the page
We want to make sure that the table element exists on the page when trying to "grab" it. We'll use the Wait Until Element Is Visible
keyword. We just need a locator.
The HTML markup of the table area on the page looks like this:
...
<div id="sales-results">
<table class="table table-dark table-striped">
...
</table>
</div>
...
The table is wrapped in a <div>
element with an id
attribute of sales-results
. Our locator will then be id:sales-results
.
Look at that beautiful code. It's almost like that page was created for this course! ๐
We will modify our keyword like this:
*** Keywords ***
Export the table as a PDF
Wait Until Element Is Visible id:sales-results
Next, we want to put the HTML markup of that element into a variable. We can do this with the Get Element Attribute
keyword (RPA.Browser.Selenium
library) like this:
*** Keywords ***
Export the table as a PDF
Wait Until Element Is Visible id:sales-results
${sales_results_html}= Get Element Attribute id:sales-results outerHTML
Ok, we admit this was not too easy to guess. ๐ But no panic! Let's see what's going on on this new line.
We create a variable (${sales_results_html}=
). We store into it what we get out of the Get Element Attribute
keyword. We pass two arguments to that keyword: the first is the locator for the element (id:sales-results
); the second is the name of the attribute of the element we want to get.
In our case, we want all the HTML markup of that element, including everything inside it, so we choose the outerHTML
attribute.
You can read more about the Element API if you are interested. It gets pretty technical, though. Please don't say we did not warn you! ๐
Alright! Let's rerun our robot.
The log shows the robot has now grabbed the HTML markup for the table:
Creating the PDF file out of the HTML contents variable
Only one more step to go!
Now that we have the HTML contents of the table in a variable, we need to create a PDF file out of it. To do it, we will add the RPA.PDF
library!
Add a new library, get new keywords... Wax on, wax off... ๐ฅ Practice will make us perfect! ๐ช
*** Settings ***
Documentation Insert the sales data for the week and export it as a PDF.
Library RPA.Browser.Selenium auto_close=${FALSE}
Library RPA.Excel.Files
Library RPA.HTTP
Library RPA.PDF
Now we can add the final line to our keyword.
*** Keywords ***
Export the table as a PDF
Wait Until Element Is Visible id:sales-results
${sales_results_html}= Get Element Attribute id:sales-results outerHTML
Html To Pdf ${sales_results_html} ${OUTPUT_DIR}${/}sales_results.pdf
We use the Html To Pdf
keyword provided by the RPA.PDF
library to create a sales_results.pdf
file out of our ${sales_results_html}
variable's contents, and place it again into the output
folder (${OUTPUT_DIR}${/}
).
And that's it!
Here's what our robot code looks like now:
*** Settings ***
Documentation Insert the sales data for the week and export it as a PDF.
Library RPA.Browser.Selenium auto_close=${FALSE}
Library RPA.Excel.Files
Library RPA.HTTP
Library RPA.PDF
*** Tasks ***
Insert the sales data for the week and export it as a PDF
Open the intranet website
Log in
Download the Excel file
Fill the form using the data from the Excel file
Collect the results
Export the table as a PDF
*** Keywords ***
Open the intranet website
Open Available Browser https://robotsparebinindustries.com/
Log in
Input Text username maria
Input Password password thoushallnotpass
Submit Form
Wait Until Page Contains Element id:sales-form
Download the Excel file
Download https://robotsparebinindustries.com/SalesData.xlsx overwrite=True
Fill and submit the form for one person
[Arguments] ${sales_rep}
Input Text firstname ${sales_rep}[First Name]
Input Text lastname ${sales_rep}[Last Name]
Input Text salesresult ${sales_rep}[Sales]
Select From List By Value salestarget ${sales_rep}[Sales Target]
Click Button Submit
Fill the form using the data from the Excel file
Open Workbook SalesData.xlsx
${sales_reps}= Read Worksheet As Table header=True
Close Workbook
FOR ${sales_rep} IN @{sales_reps}
Fill and submit the form for one person ${sales_rep}
END
Collect the results
Screenshot css:div.sales-summary ${OUTPUT_DIR}${/}sales_summary.png
Export the table as a PDF
Wait Until Element Is Visible id:sales-results
${sales_results_html}= Get Element Attribute id:sales-results outerHTML
Html To Pdf ${sales_results_html} ${OUTPUT_DIR}${/}sales_results.pdf
Let's run the robot one final time.
A new sales_results.pdf
file appears in the output
directory, containing the sales data! ๐๐๐
If you click on the PDF document, VS Code might suggest finding a suitable extension for viewing PDF documents. You can accept and install an extension!
What we learned
- You can use the
Get Element Attribute
keyword from theRPA.Browser.Selenium
library to get the actual HTML markup of any element using theouterHTML
attribute. - You can create a PDF file from HTML content using the
RPA.PDF
library and theHtml To Pdf
keyword.