Excel Spreadsheet Automation on Browse AI Data with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for Browse AI provides formulas that can query Browse AI data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search Browse AI data for a user-specified value and then organize the results into an Excel spreadsheet.

The syntax of the CDATAQUERY formula is the following:

=CDATAQUERY(Query, [Connection], [Parameters], [ResultLocation]);

This formula requires three inputs:

• Query: The declaration of the Browse AI data records you want to retrieve, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as APIConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Browse AI data, separated by semicolons.

  Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the BrowseAI Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\BrowseAI.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for BrowseAI (see below).

  BrowseAI API Profile Settings

  BrowseAI is a web scraping and automation platform that allows you to train robots to extract and monitor data from websites. Authentication is performed using an API key that is sent as a Bearer token in the Authorization header.

  The BrowseAI API key has the format {userId}:{apiKey}, where both parts are UUIDs separated by a colon. This full string is provided as a single value in the BrowseAI dashboard.

  To obtain your API key:

  1. Log in to your BrowseAI account at https://app.browse.ai
  2. Navigate to Settings in the dashboard
  3. Locate the API section
  4. Copy the full API key string displayed (format: userId:apiKey)

  After obtaining your API key, set the following connection properties:

  • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.

  Set the following in the ProfileSettings connection property:

  • APIKey: Set this to your BrowseAI API key (format: userId:apiKey).
• ResultLocation: The cell that the output of results should start from.

Pass Spreadsheet Cells as Inputs to the Query

The procedure below results in a spreadsheet that organizes all the formula inputs in the first column.

1. Define cells for the formula inputs. In addition to the connection inputs, add another input to define a criterion for a filter to be used to search Browse AI data, such as RobotId.
2. In another cell, write the formula, referencing the cell values from the user input cells defined above. Single quotes are used to enclose values such as addresses that may contain spaces.

=CDATAQUERY("SELECT * FROM RobotTasks WHERE RobotId = '"&B5&"'","Profile="&B1&";AuthScheme="&B2&";ProfileSettings="&B3&";Provider=API",B6)


3. Change the filter to change the data.