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Lesson 7 4 min

Read something from the page

Give the workflow something to work on. Get Selected Text reads what you highlight on the page you're viewing.

Try it in AWFlow

Opens this lesson's workflow in AWFlow. You review it before anything is saved.

Open the finished workflow (opens in a new tab)

Add Get Selected Text

Click the + on the right edge of When Started, search for Get Selected Text and pick it. Double-click it to open its settings, set Output field name to text, then close the panel (× at the top right, or Esc).

The settings panel of Get Selected Text: Output field name is set to text. On the left, the Input and Output tabs; When Started is listed under Direct inputs with Run this step to see its data.The settings panel of Get Selected Text: Output field name is set to text. On the left, the Input and Output tabs; When Started is listed under Direct inputs with Run this step to see its data.
Output field name, set to text

Check: Get Selected Text is linked to When Started by a line.

Run it

Switch to another tab and select (highlight) a sentence. Come back to the AWFlow panel and click Test Workflow. Open Get Selected Text and look at its Output tab, under Actual: a text field holds your sentence, as plain text.

The settings panel of Get Selected Text: Output field name is set to text. On the left, the Input and Output tabs; When Started is listed under Direct inputs with Run this step to see its data.The settings panel of Get Selected Text: Output field name is set to text. On the left, the Input and Output tabs; When Started is listed under Direct inputs with Run this step to see its data.
Output tab: what the step produced on the last run

The node fails when nothing is selected, so the rest of the workflow doesn’t run on empty text.

Other ways to read a page

  • Get All Text reads the readable text of the whole page into one field.
  • Get Page Metadata returns the page’s address, title, description and language.
  • Get Structured Data reads tables and lists as data; you’ll use it in the Working with data track.

Key takeaways

  1. Get Selected Text puts your highlighted text in the field you name.
  2. Run, then read the node's Output tab under Actual.
  3. Get All Text and Get Page Metadata read the whole page or its details.