st: import html , what is the proper way?

[Lucas Ferreira Mation <lucasmation@gmail.com>]

Helo,

I'm trying to import data from the web page. From previous post, I saw
there are two ways to import from html, "insheet" or "infile"
(sometimes preceded by "copy" > "filefilter" to filter breaks and
unwanted html tags). I tryed both ways:

. version 12.1 // stata12.1 running on a windows 7 machine
. global url http://www.ipea.gov.br/portal/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=16643&catid=117&Itemid=5
. insheet using "$url", clear
. infile str244 text using "$url", clear

Neither really works:

infile : imported file is all corrupt, it seems that every space as
interpreted as a line break. Can I solve this with filefilter?

insheet: line breaks seem to be fairly ok (although not perfect in all
cases), but some rows were split into different columns ( I suppose
the lines that had a "," in them). Is there a "never occurring
delimiter" that I could use so the variables are never split?

More generally, is there a way to import from HTML so that the
imported file looks just like what the source code I see in the
browser?

tks
Lucas
*
*   For searches and help try:
*   http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
*   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/
*   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/