Access tables in HTML Type Provider by index

[isaacabraham]

Currently you can only access tables by the "name" of the table; there are cases where you have data in several pages that have the same "schema" of table but the name differs e.g.

http://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uefa/data/method4/match2014.html
http://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uefa/data/method4/match2013.html
http://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uefa/data/method4/match2012.html

e.g.

   type ResultData = HtmlProvider< @"http://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uefa/data/method4/match2014.html">

    ResultData.GetSample()
          .Tables
          .``UEFA European Cup Matches 2013/2014`` // <- this bit should be .[1] etc. ```

[github-actions]

🤖 This is an automated response from Repo Assist.

You can work around the index-access limitation today using HtmlDocument directly, which gives you ordered access to all tables as a sequence:

type ResultData = HtmlProvider<"(kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/redacted)

// Access table by index via HtmlDocument
let doc = ResultData.GetSample().Html
let firstTable = doc.Descendants("table") |> Seq.head
let secondTable = doc.Descendants("table") |> Seq.item 1

Or more concisely, using the Tables() helper that HtmlDocument exposes:

let allTables = doc.Descendants["table"]
let tableByIndex = allTables |> Seq.item 0

For the cross-page scenario where the table name changes but the schema is stable, load using the HtmlProvider type but parse at runtime with a consistent index:

type MatchData = HtmlProvider<"(kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/redacted)

let getFirstTableRows (url: string) =
    let doc = MatchData.Load(url)
    // Use the strongly-typed `.Rows` via the known table type
    // OR fallback to HtmlDocument for positional access:
    doc.Html.Descendants("table")
    |> Seq.head
    |> fun t -> t.Descendants("tr")

Adding a first-class positional accessor (e.g. doc.Tables.[0] or an overload of HtmlProvider that exposes tables as a list) would be a good enhancement — the workaround above is usable but not as ergonomic as named access.

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