PySide6-Web-Table-Extractor

A PySide6 desktop app for extracting all HTML tables on a web page, and allowing for preview and export to Excel or CSV format.

Features

• Load a page from a URL, or from a saved local HTML file
• Detects every <table> on the page and lists them with their captions
• Click a table to preview its data before exporting
• Export to Excel (.xlsx) or CSV (.csv)

Scope & Limitations

This tool is designed for extracting tables from publicly accessible web pages. Pages behind a login, or sites that block automated requests, are intentionally not worked around. Log in normally in your browser, save the fully loaded page (Ctrl+S), and use Load Local HTML instead.

The parser looks for standard HTML <table> tags. Tables built another way (CSS grids, <div> layouts) won't be detected. Saving the loaded page from your browser sometimes helps with tables that are built with JavaScript.

Screenshot

Main App Window

The user interface with a local test HTML file loaded and a table selected.

Under the hood

Table parsing

• Row and column spans
  Tables are built into a proper grid, with rowspan and colspan cells repeated into every position they cover.

• Headers are best effort, data is exact
  Header layouts vary too much across the web to get right every time. If a table's header row doesn't line up with its data, the extra columns are labelled POTENTIAL HEADER MISALIGNMENT in the export so it's obvious something needs checking.

HTML Fetching

• Requests have a short timeout, a rate limit, a content-type check, and a size check based on the Content-Length header (if the server sends one).

• All outgoing request related logic located in request_manager.py for easier security review.

Getting Started

Running the Application

• Requires Python 3.10 or later.
• Clone the repository to your machine.
• Navigate into the project folder.
• Install the required dependencies using pip install -r requirements.txt.
• Run the application using python main.py.

Packaging

The application can be packaged into an executable using PyInstaller.

The application is cross‑platform by design and should run on Windows, Linux, and macOS. However, macOS packaging isn't documented here as I don't have access to macOS hardware to test or confirm the builds.

Run the following command from the project folder:

Windows:

PyInstaller (tested):

pyinstaller --name=WebTableExtractor --noconsole --icon="resources/icons/app-icon.ico" --add-data "resources/*;resources" main.py

Linux:

PyInstaller (tested):

python -m PyInstaller --name=WebTableExtractor --noconsole --icon="resources/icons/app-icon.png" --add-data "resources/*:resources" main.py

Credits & Thanks

• Application icon sourced from UXWing.