Is there a way to export a list of profiles?

Question

What I want to do is create a list of all the profiles in a category or in a name list ("name Genealogy" pages) that I can load into a spreadsheet. (I find it easier sometimes to keep track of things with spreadsheets.) At a minimum, I want the WikiTree ID, the name as given on a name list, and the birth info (to help distinguish between identical names). It would be nice to have an indication of whether I'm on the trusted list or a manager, but I can do that manually if needed.

I tried generating such a list by copy/paste from a name Genealogy list, but all the handy links for special views made it a mess. The list on a category page doesn't have WikiTree IDs or consistent separators that can be used as column delimiters, & only shows decades instead of exact dates.

Has someone ever created a tool I could use for this purpose?

Answer 1

I agree WikiTree need to be better creating lists. In my opion you can't do effective genealogy without good reports/lists

1. If the users is just on WikiTree I suggest export to GEDCOM and then find a tool that can create a Excel/Google Calc from that list (http://www.cyndislist.com)
    
2. If the users are on Wikidata I have done templates for Noble Houses to generate lists see Space:Test_Template_NobleHouse or my blog. We can easily create other lists tools,...

Comments

The Wikipedia community has understand the importancy of list creation and have started to describe different scenarious see Wikidata:List_generation_input 

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Another tool that is good to use to create wiki lists see http://www.tablesgenerator.com/mediawiki_tables

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Thanks. I'll keep that "tables generator" link for future reference. But right now I need something that goes the other way -- generating a table from a wiki list. I was going to try the GEDCOM suggestion, but it is also limited to the watchlist, like the suggestion in the other answer...

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I would really love to have this functionality too. It would be a great supplement to Category pages if the profiles on those pages could be exported to a spreadsheet for further research. It would be incredibly useful for place studies in particular.

Answer 2

I copy/paste from my watchlist straight into Excel spreadsheet. Works everytime. A little bit of formatting of cell widths/heights, but no problems.

Comments

For the watchlist, yes, that works. But not every profile I need in my list is on my watchlist... For profiles that are open, I never bother to request Trusted access; I just notify the managers of what I'm planning to add to the profiles. I might have to re-think that policy...

Answer 3

I've done something similar by copying the page source (usually accessible through your browser's "tools" menu) into my text editor, then using a series of REGEX find and replaces to eliminate all the 'cruft' --- the difference between copying the page source and the page itself is that you can truncate the links down to just the WikitreeID.

Unfortunately I can't give you a tutorial on REGEX but it is super useful (if available in your programs) for this sort of thing.

Comments

I was playing around with that the other day when I first saw this question... using curl, awk, etc.... but it was going to be way to clumsy to handoff to anyone, and I'm too lazy to make an actual program out of it (I already have a real job, still)

curl -s http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Ystads_Sankta_Maria_%28M%29 2>/dev/null | grep "\/wiki\/.*\-.*title\=" | grep -v 'Category\|WikiTree' | tr ' ' '\n' | grep title | cut -f2 -d'"'

Something like that :)

I'm sure you could come up with something better, but it mostly works.