relationship query creates a full html table in output cells

[Bruno Lerer]

Now that I’ve been introduced to the joys of the relationship query, I spent some time playing with it in the tri-compare template. With “balance sheet”, etc. searches, things are as expected, but…

If you input in cells G3,H3 and I3 (or their siblings) either of the following set of values

443815	   ="compensation"      11101	
485391	      ="leases"        1032	
477076	      = "tax"	 00000022	

the content of cell H6 (and, depending on the query, H7, H8, etc.) is a full HTML page containing both narrative and related tabular data (“NOTE K – SHARE-BASED COMPENSATION”, for example).

AFAIK, there is no way in Excel to parse the html in that cell (FILTERXML(), strangely enough, only works with URLs, not with content in the workbook).

Is that, as they used to say, a bug or a feature?

• This topic was modified 2 years, 7 months ago by Bruno Lerer.
• This topic was modified 2 years, 7 months ago by Bruno Lerer.

[david.tauriello@xbrl.us]

Hi Bruno – you might find or write a VBA macro to handle this, although a disclosure can often run several pages and might be tough to work with.

The XBRL Statements and Disclosures template for Excel (second in the list on the XBRL Data Community) has been recently updated to accommodate HTML – when the fact.value contains HTML, a link appears in the row that opens a browser to the rendered entry in our Public Filings Database.

[Bruno Lerer]

Thanks, David.

I don’t know VBA (nor do I have any interest whatsoever in getting to know it…), but from bitter experience in trying to parse EDGAR HTMl documents (with both Python and JavaScript), I know that is a fool’s errand. I guess we’ll have to live with it.

As an aside – regarding the update to the template you mention; I wasn’t aware of the update – it may be a good idea to add to each file in the list of the Member-contributed API Templates and Tools, a field indicating when that file was last updated.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 7 months ago by Bruno Lerer.

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