# Retrieve data via screen **URL:** \ **Category:** Ignition\ **Created:** [May 2, 2017, 4:23pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/retrieve-data-via-screen/14187 "2017-05-02T16:23:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![lozzer65](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f475e1/32.png) [@lozzer65](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/lozzer65)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 4:23pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/retrieve-data-via-screen/14187/1 "2017-05-02T16:23:36Z")
Hi I am very new to Ignition and have done some basic pages with tags from a plc. Now I need to get some production data and create a daily report from figures from the last 24hrs. The problem I have with this is that the database itself is not accessible to me. I can view the pages and set parameters in the url for the time scale I want to report. I have seen some mention of screen scraping, that can pull the data from a page without direct access to the database. Is this something that could be implemented in this case ? Could someone assist me with some guidance and ideas of how to tackle this issue. Thanks for any help. Laurie ---
**Author:** ![matt.eaton](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/matt.eaton/32/72046_2.png) [@matt.eaton](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/matt.eaton)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 5:47pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/retrieve-data-via-screen/14187/2 "2017-05-02T17:47:05Z")
Just to be clear, you can access the data via a url with parameters and you want to scrape the data out of the html that you’d normally render onto a browser because you can’t get at the underlying database? ---
**Author:** ![lozzer65](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f475e1/32.png) [@lozzer65](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/lozzer65)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 8:16pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/retrieve-data-via-screen/14187/3 "2017-05-02T20:16:50Z")
Yes, I can confirm that is exactly what I want to do, but have no idea how to achieve it, or create a report with the data once I do have it. Any help to get me started would be appreciated. ---
**Author:** ![matt.eaton](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/matt.eaton/32/72046_2.png) [@matt.eaton](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/matt.eaton)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 8:34pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/retrieve-data-via-screen/14187/4 "2017-05-02T20:34:12Z")
[https://docs.inductiveautomation.com/display/DOC79/system.net.httpGet](https://docs.inductiveautomation.com/display/DOC79/system.net.httpGet) This is the method you’d use to get started. Then I suggest you look at the[python re library](https://docs.python.org/2/library/re.html) and the string you get back. You’re going to basically look for patterns that contain the information you want. [http://pythex.org/](http://pythex.org/) is a great resource to test your regular expressions. I would particularly read up on look behind assertions and look-ahead assertions. Feel free to reach out with the raw html to get some help building the regex to find your data. ---
**Author:** ![lozzer65](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f475e1/32.png) [@lozzer65](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/lozzer65)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2017, 8:49pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/retrieve-data-via-screen/14187/5 "2017-05-28T20:49:25Z")
Thanks for this info above. I am completely new to this system. Would it be possible to have a bit of a step by step guide and maybe a a small example to get me started. I am sure once I can get some data it will all fall into place. Does this imported data have to be stored in a database ? Thanks for any assistance.