Develop Reference

PowerBi: Query HTML table

What I need
I need to retrieve data from this source . Let's assume I must use only PowerBi for this.
What I did so far
If I use the basic web source option, then the query is just basically an htlm parsing with which I can easily get the data found in the html scope of the page, example:
Source:
The steps I'm following through Web source option:
Query:
(to simplify the example, assume we don't need the dates)
You can download that example .pbix file here.
The problem
The problem is that I need more data, which can't be accessed through the html preview. For example, let's imagine I need to retrieve the data from January 2010 to April 2020. Those king of queries can only be done via this button located in the webpage (which exports the requested data to an Excel workbook):
The idea is to get this process automated, so going to the source and export the excel file all the time is not an option.
Inspecting the element I realized that what it does is execute a javascript function:
The question
As a PowerBi/PowerQuery noob I wonder: Is there any way I can get that data directly with PowerBi (maybe calling the js function somehow)? If there is so, then how?
Thank you in advance.

The solution to my case was to use URL parameters to retrieve de data without parsing the html table.
❌Original URL I was using:
https://gee.bccr.fi.cr/indicadoreseconomicos/Cuadros/frmVerCatCuadro.aspx?idioma=1&CodCuadro=%20400
✔️New URL for the query, adding some parameters:
https://gee.bccr.fi.cr/indicadoreseconomicos/Cuadros/frmVerCatCuadro.aspx?idioma=1&CodCuadro=%20400&Idioma=1&FecInicial=2010/01/01&FecFinal=2040/01/01&Filtro=0&Exportar=True
This procedure only works in this case, because obviously the parameters will not be the same on other web pages.
However, I post this answer to keep the main idea for those who are in a similar situation: first try with the appropriate url parameters to get the data in a different format. Of course you first must know which are the available parameters, which is a limitation.

JavaScript GET to retrieve one variable

I haven't really written any javascript but am building an iOS application that will utilize JavaScriptCore's framework to read a javascript code to get a variable. What I'm looking to do is set up a GET (I think) so that I can retrieve JSON data from a url and then pull a specific string from the JSON data. Within the GET method, I'll need to add credentials and one parameter. What is the best practice to do this?

As per Rory's statement above the server you are requesting the json data from must either be on the same domain as your Application/Js code or support the CORS headers.
If the above is true, then you can either use JQUery as suggested above, or for a more minimalist approach the W3Schools has a tutorial on basic Ajax.
https://www.w3schools.com/xml/dom_httprequest.asp

Live updating from JSON

I have a JSON file which is dynamically and contain match info including an unique id. The JSON is divided into 3 arrays live, upcoming and recent. Since i'm quite new to Javascript i'm wondering what would be the best way to go in order to make this livescore script. I need it to be updating without refreshing browser? What is my options? Maybe someone has a snippet?
The JSON is automatically updates through another script which is connected to a cron job, so the script does not need to do anything regarding the JSON. Only retrieve and show the data.
I'm using dreamhost, which gives me access to shell, so websockets and so on is an option.

You'll need a jquery user to give you a snippit for this one, but in vanilla ecmascript 6, you use an XMLHttpRequest object to get the JSON from your server. This object can request data from the server asynchronously and is triggered by the client/browser so you can update the live match info when and as often as you like. You would just have to write a function to replace the data on the webpage with the new info when it is updated.

Is fetching remote data server-side and processing it on server faster than passing data to client to handle?

I am developing a web app which functions in a similar way to a search engine (except it's very specific and on a much smaller scale). When the user gives a query, I parse that query, and depending on what it is, proceed to carry out one of the following:
Grab data from an XML file located on another domain (ie: from www.example.com/rss/) which is essentially an RSS feed
Grab the HTML from an external web page, and proceed to parse it to locate text found in a certain div on that page
All the data is plain text, save for a couple of specific queries which will return images. This data will be displayed without requiring a page refresh/redirect.
I understand that there is the same domain policy which prevents me from using Javascript/Ajax to grab this data. An option is to use PHP to do this, but my main concern is the server load.
So my concerns are:
Are there any workarounds to obtain this data client-side instead of server-side?
If there are none, is the optimum solution in my case to: obtain the data via my server, pass it on to the client for parsing (with Javascript/Ajax) and then proceed to display it in the appropriate form?
If the above is my solution, all my server is doing with PHP is obtaining the data from the external domains. In the worst (best?) case scenario, let's say a thousand or so requests are being executed in a minute, is it efficient for my web server to be handling all those requests?
Once I have a clear idea of the flow of events it's much easier to begin.
Thanks.

I just finish a project to do the same request like your req.
My suggestion is:
use to files, [1] for frontend, make ajax call to sen back url; [2] receive ajax call, and get file content from url, then parse xml/html
in that way, it can avoid your php dead in some situation
for php, please look into [DomDocument] class, for parse xml/html, you also need [DOMXPath]
Please read: http://www.php.net/manual/en/class.domdocument.php
No matter what you do, I suggest you always archive the data in you local server.
So, the process become - search your local first, if not exist, then grab from remote also archive for - 24 hrs.
BTW, for your client-side parse idea, I suggest you do so. jQuery can handle both html and xml, for HTML you just need to filter all the js code before parse it.
So the idea become :
ajax call local service
local php grab xm/html (but no parsing)
archive to local
send filter html/xml to frontend, let jQuery to parse it.

HTML is similar to XML. I would suggest grabbing the page as HTML and traversing through it with an XML reader as XML.

Obtaining value obtained by javascript using PHP

I was able to extract user information from the social Graph API and display it on my site within tags . How do I now get this information, and use it in a PHP script? In other words, say I want to use PHP to calculate the weather, but only based on the preferred weather on a users facebook profile(hypothetical situation). Now, assuming I have obtained the users preferred weather using javascript, how do I use PHP to get that information in order to perform my calculations? I guess one way would be to use regular expressions to match the values on the same page, but that seems tedious. Any help/direction is appreciated.

Are you using php to access the Facebook API or the pre built HTML they provide? You should use php to retrieve the data, do what you need to do with the data, and then display it on a webpage, rather than the other way around.

You can use javascript to get the data, then send it to your php script using AJAX, but this is a round-about way of doing it.
You can make the call the to the Graph API directly from your PHP script. Something like this:
$r = new HttpRequest('https://socialgraph.googleapis.com/<method_name>', HttpRequest::METH_GET);
You will need to parse the data when you get the response -- json_decode() should do the trick.