Retrieving web content

In the last section, we covered accessing data within files stored on a local computer or network file system. However, another common source of data is the internet. The standard M library includes a number of functions for retrieving data from the internet, including:

• Web.BrowserContents
• Html.Table
• Web.Page
• Web.Contents
• Web.Headers
• WebAction.Request

To see these functions in action, first perform these steps:

1. Select Get Data from the Home tab of the Power Query editor and then choose Web.
2. In the From Web dialog, use the following for the URL, https://subscription.packtpub.com/search.
3. Press the OK button.
4. Select Anonymous authentication and press the Connect button.
5. In the Navigator dialog, choose HTML Code under the Text folder.

Following these steps generates the following M code as viewed in the Advanced Editor:

let
    #"HTML Code" = Web.BrowserContents...