Abstract: Provided are methods and systems for joining semi-structured data from the web with relational data in a spreadsheet table using input-output examples. A first sub-task performed by the system learns a string transformation program to transform input rows of a table to URL strings that correspond to the webpages where the relevant data is present. A second sub-task learns a program in a rich web data extraction language to extract desired data from the webpage given the example extractions. Hierarchical search and input-driven ranking are used to efficiently learn the programs using few input-output examples. The learnt programs are then run on the remaining spreadsheet entries to join desired data from the corresponding web pages.

Abstract: Provided are methods and systems for joining semi-structured data from the web with relational data in a spreadsheet table using input-output examples. A first sub-task performed by the system learns a string transformation program to transform input rows of a table to URL strings that correspond to the webpages where the relevant data is present. A second sub-task learns a program in a rich web data extraction language to extract desired data from the webpage given the example extractions. Hierarchical search and input-driven ranking are used to efficiently learn the programs using few input-output examples. The learnt programs are then run on the remaining spreadsheet entries to join desired data from the corresponding web pages.