Downloading the Excel file
Each week, the actual sales data is exported from the company's sales system and uploaded to the intranet. Our robot will need to get the data out of the Excel file and fill the sales form for each sales representative. But first, it needs to download the Excel file.
As always, we add one more line (a keyword call) to our *** Tasks ***
section. This time we will not add it at the end of the task, but before the Fill and submit the form
keyword:
Then, as you probably guessed by now, we add a new keyword to the *** Keywords ***
section:
Great! Now we have to implement the keyword.
Adding the RPA.HTTP
library
Currently, our robot does not know how to download files from remote web servers. But by now, we know how to teach an old robot new skills: by adding a library!
Our trusty rpaframework
set of open-source automation libraries includes the RPA.HTTP
library that adds many keywords to work with remote web servers, so that's just what we need.
We add a new library import line to our *** Settings ***
section like this:
The auto-completion works with library imports, too: Try typing
li
and auto-completing the rest.
Now we can use all of the keywords contained in the RPA.HTTP
library, including the Download
keyword.
The Download
keyword requires a URL as an argument. We know that we can expect our Excel file at https://robotsparebinindustries.com/SalesData.xlsx
each week.
In addition to the URL argument, we are also setting the overwrite
argument to True
. This way, we can count on the local file being always the most recent version (if the file exists, the robot has our permission to overwrite it).
Our keyword becomes:
With these additions, our robot looks like this:
Let's run our robot now (Shift-Command-P
(macOS) or Ctrl+Shift+P
(Windows)).
Great! Our robot has downloaded the remote file (SalesData.xlsx
). You should find the file amongst your other robot files. You could instruct the robot to download to a different location, but we are okay with the current working directory.
What we learned
- You can use the
RPA.HTTP
library, part of therpaframework
collection of open-source automation libraries, to interact with remote webservers. - You can use the
Download
keyword to easily download remote files to your local computer. - The
Download
keyword can be configured to overwrite an existing file of the same name if found. - The robot still looks human-readable'ish!