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steventwerd's avatar
steventwerd
Occasional Contributor
4 years ago

Retrieving data from website without going to it.

Hi,

I want to read some data from the BBC Website such as today's weather and store it in a variable. I know this can be done by recording a test going to the website and saving the value on the screen. Is there a way to do this without having to go directly to the website (without having to do all the clicks and typing to get to the website).

I was thinking an API or Web-Service is the right call but I don't know of an API that can connect to any website and a web-service requires a WSDL document which I don't quite understand.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

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  • Marsha_R's avatar
    Marsha_R
    Icon for Champion Level 3 rankChampion Level 3
    4 years ago
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    APIs are specific to the application(s) involved.  

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/API

     

    It's possible that BBC has one in place for what you are looking for.  Take a look on their website and see.  If you find something that looks like it will work, then post back here and we can help you set up to use it in TC.

     

    • steventwerd's avatar
      steventwerd
      Occasional Contributor
      4 years ago
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      Hi Marsha_R 

      I couldn't find an API for BBC website unforunately but I would still like to learn how to use an API so I got the Weather API (free weather api I found online) and now I got an API key and all that. How would I go about using this in a TestComplete Test?