Tableau Scraper

Python library to scrape data from Tableau viz

R library is under development but a script is available to get the worksheets, see this

Python

Install

pip install TableauScraper

Usage

Get worksheets data

from tableauscraper import TableauScraper as TS

url = "https://public.tableau.com/views/PlayerStats-Top5Leagues20192020/OnePlayerSummary"

ts = TS()
ts.loads(url)
workbook = ts.getWorkbook()

for t in workbook.worksheets:
    print(f"worksheet name : {t.name}") #show worksheet name
    print(t.data) #show dataframe for this worksheet

Try this on repl.it

Get a specific worksheet

from tableauscraper import TableauScraper as TS

url = "https://public.tableau.com/views/PlayerStats-Top5Leagues20192020/OnePlayerSummary"

ts = TS()
ts.loads(url)

ws = ts.getWorksheet("ATT MID CREATIVE COMP")
print(ws.data)

select a selectable item

from tableauscraper import TableauScraper as TS

url = "https://public.tableau.com/views/PlayerStats-Top5Leagues20192020/OnePlayerSummary"

ts = TS()
ts.loads(url)

ws = ts.getWorksheet("ATT MID CREATIVE COMP")

# show selectable values
selections = ws.getSelectableItems()
print(selections)

# select that value
dashboard = ws.select("ATTR(Player)", "Vinicius Júnior")

# display worksheets
for t in dashboard.worksheets:
    print(t.data)

Try this on repl.it

set parameter

Get list of parameters with workbook.getParameters() and set parameter value using workbook.setParameter("column_name", "value") :

from tableauscraper import TableauScraper as TS

url = "https://public.tableau.com/views/PlayerStats-Top5Leagues20192020/OnePlayerSummary"

ts = TS()
ts.loads(url)
workbook = ts.getWorkbook()

# show parameters values / column
parameters = workbook.getParameters()
print(parameters)

# set parameters column / value
workbook = workbook.setParameter("P.League 2", "Ligue 1")

# display worksheets
for t in workbook.worksheets:
    print(t.data)

Try this on repl.it

It's possible to override the parameter name used in the API requests using inputParameter, which is different from the input name:

wb = wb.setParameter(inputName=None, value="Ligue 1",
                     inputParameter="[Parameters].[P.League (copy)_1642969456470679625]")

set filter

Get list of filters with worksheet.getFilters and set filter value using worksheet.setFilter("column_name", "value"):

from tableauscraper import TableauScraper as TS

url = 'https://public.tableau.com/views/WomenInOlympics/Dashboard1'
ts = TS()
ts.loads(url)

# show original data for worksheet
ws = ts.getWorksheet("Bar Chart")
print(ws.data)

# get filters columns and values
filters = ws.getFilters()
print(filters)

# set filter value
wb = ws.setFilter('Olympics', 'Winter')

# show the new data for worksheet
countyWs = wb.getWorksheet("Bar Chart")
print(countyWs.data)

Try this on repl.it

More advanced filtering options

You can specify dashboardFilter=True in order to use dashboard-categorical-filter API instead of categorical-filter-by-index API (related)
When using dashboardFilter=True you can skip the filter value check usin noCheck=True (related)
You can discard membershipTarget property from being sent in setFilter using setFilter('COLUMN','VALUE', membershipTarget=False) (related)
You can specify multiple filters for filters that enable that feature using setFilter('COLUMN', ['VALUE1','VALUE2'])
You can specify a "filter-delta" filter type adding the parameter filterDelta=True like the following setFilter('COLUMN','VALUE', filterDelta=True). This will discard all filters and add the one corresponding to ['VALUE'] in this case. This is helpful when all or some filters are selected by default, and you want to unselect them. The default behaviour (filterDelta=False) is filter-replace which sometimes doesn't work when filter multi-selection is possible in the dashboard. example
In last recourse, you can use indexValues property to directly specify the indices (if there is a bug in the library or anything comes up): setFilter('COLUMN', [], indexValues=[0,1,2])

Story points

Some Tableau dashboard have storypoints where you can navigate. To list the storypoints and go to a specific storypoints:

from tableauscraper import TableauScraper as TS

url = 'https://public.tableau.com/views/EarthquakeTrendStory2/Finished-Earthquakestory'
ts = TS()
ts.loads(url)
wb = ts.getWorkbook()

print(wb.getStoryPoints())
print("go to specific storypoint")
sp = wb.goToStoryPoint(storyPointId=10)

print(sp.getWorksheetNames())
print(sp.getWorksheet("Timeline").data)

Try this on repl.it

Level drill Up/Down

On some graph/table, there is a drill up/down feature used to zoom in or out data like this

from tableauscraper import TableauScraper as TS

url = 'https://tableau.azdhs.gov/views/ELRv2testlevelandpeopletested/PeopleTested'
ts = TS()
ts.loads(url)
wb = ts.getWorkbook()

sheetName = "P1 - Tests by Day W/ % Positivity (Both) (2)"

drillDown1 = wb.getWorksheet(sheetName).levelDrill(drillDown=True, position=1)
drillDown2 = drillDown1.getWorksheet(sheetName).levelDrill(drillDown=True, position=1)
drillDown3 = drillDown2.getWorksheet(sheetName).levelDrill(drillDown=True, position=1)

print(drillDown1.getWorksheet(sheetName).data)
print(drillDown2.getWorksheet(sheetName).data)
print(drillDown3.getWorksheet(sheetName).data)

Try this on repl.it

The position parameter is default to 0. It doesn't seem to be present in the json configuration. If the default is not working try incrementing it or checkout the network tabs using Chrome devtools.

Download CSV data

For Tableau URL that have the download feature enabled, you can download full data using:

from tableauscraper import TableauScraper as TS

url = 'https://public.tableau.com/views/WYCOVID-19Dashboard/WyomingCOVID-19CaseDashboard'
ts = TS()
ts.loads(url)
wb = ts.getWorkbook()
data = wb.getCsvData(sheetName='case map')

print(data)

Note that in some Tableau server, the prefix used in the API url is different. As it's set in the javascript, it must be set manually if it's not the same as public.tableau.com like:

wb.getCsvData(sheetName='worksheet1', prefix="vud")

The prefix values, I've encountered are: vud and vudcsv. The default is vudcsv.

Try this on repl.it

Download Cross Tab data

For Tableau URL that have the crosstab feature enabled, you can download the crosstab using:

from tableauscraper import TableauScraper as TS

url = "https://tableau.soa.org/t/soa-public/views/USPostLevelTermMortalityExperienceInteractiveTool/DataTable2"

ts = TS()
ts.loads(url)
wb = ts.getWorkbook()

wb.setParameter(inputName="Count or Amount", value="Amount")

data = wb.getCrossTabData(
    sheetName="Data Table 2 - Premium Jump & PLT Duration")

print(data)

Go to sheet

Get list of all sheets with subsheets visible or invisible, ability to send a go-to-sheet command (dashboar button) :

from tableauscraper import TableauScraper as TS

url = "https://public.tableau.com/views/COVID-19VaccineTrackerDashboard_16153822244270/Dosesadministered"
ts = TS()
ts.loads(url)
workbook = ts.getWorkbook()

sheets = workbook.getSheets()
print(sheets)

nycAdults = workbook.goToSheet("NYC Adults")
for t in nycAdults.worksheets:
    print(f"worksheet name : {t.name}")  # show worksheet name
    print(t.data)  # show dataframe for this worksheet

Render tooltip

Get the tooltip html output when render-tooltip-server API is called. This is particularly useful when dealing with server side rendering dashboard:

from tableauscraper import TableauScraper as TS

url = "https://public.tableau.com/views/CMI-2_0/CMI"

ts = TS()
ts.loads(url)
workbook = ts.getWorkbook()
ws = workbook.getWorksheet("US Map - State - CMI")

tooltipHtml = ws.renderTooltip(x=387, y=196)
print(tooltipHtml)

Sample usecases

Server side rendering

If the tableau url you're working on is using server side rendering, data can't be extracted as is.

You can checkout if your tableau url is using server side rendering by opening chrome development console / network tab. You would notice the API calls have renderMode properties set to render-mode-server:

server side render mode

Server side rendering means that no data is sent to the browser. Instead, the server is rendering the tableau chart using images only and detects selection using mouse coordinates.

To extract the data, one thing that has worked with some tableau url was to trigger a specific filter that is not server-side-rendered. You can checkout the network tab on Chrome development console to check if the filter call is using or not server-side rendering or client-side-rendering with renderMode:

client side rendering

If the filter is only using client side rendering, you can list all filters and perform the filter for each value. This technique only works if the tableau data has "cleared" the filter by default otherwise the data is already cached when the tableau data is loaded, and since it's using server side rendering you can't access this data

Checkout the following repl.it for examples with tableau url using server side rendering:

Testing Python script

To discover all worksheets, selectable columns and dropdowns, run prompt.py script under scripts directory :

git clone git@github.com:bertrandmartel/tableau-scraping.git
cd tableau-scraping/scripts

#get worksheets data
python3 prompt.py -get workbook -url "https://public.tableau.com/views/PlayerStats-Top5Leagues20192020/OnePlayerSummary"

#select a selectable item
python3 prompt.py -get select -url "https://public.tableau.com/views/MKTScoredeisolamentosocial/VisoGeral"

#set a parameter
python3 prompt.py -get parameter -url "https://public.tableau.com/views/COVID-19DailyDashboard_15960160643010/Casesbyneighbourhood"

Settings

TableauScraper class has the following optional parameters :

Parameters	default value	description
logLevel	logging.INFO	log level
delayMs	500	minimum delay in millis between api calls

R

under R directory :

Rscript tableau.R

R library is under development

Dependencies

requirements.txt

pandas
requests
beautifulsoup4

Stackoverflow Questions

See those stackoverflow posts about this topic

bertrandmartel / tableau-scraping

readme

Tableau Scraper

Python

Install

Usage

Get worksheets data

Get a specific worksheet

select a selectable item

set parameter

set filter

More advanced filtering options

Story points

Level drill Up/Down

Download CSV data

Download Cross Tab data

Go to sheet

Render tooltip

Sample usecases

Server side rendering

Testing Python script

Settings

R

Dependencies

Stackoverflow Questions