2.6. Batch Input to Forms

We are going to automate the literature search with multiple keywords. For example, we have three candidate keywords and we want to submit them for Pubmed search in batch:

Human cancer

Tumor

Breast cancer

Use the previously created Pubmed robot, right-click on the second action “Submit form with group1”. From the popup menu, select “Form Inputs à From Database …”, as in the following:

From the right panel, click on the “New” on the right of the “Data Source: ”. It shows:

Select the “Input” radio button, which means the data will be drawn from a list of inputs. If you have keywords in an Access database, or in an CSV file, choose the corresponding radio button instead. After clicking the “Input” radio button, it shows:

Give the data source a name, default as “UnnamedInput” and fill the keywords in the text box, each keyword in a line:

Then press [Next], a confirmation page is shown, click on the ‘Done’ link, and we return to the original data source page.

Now select the “UnnamedInput” from the dropdown menu following the “Data Source”, as above, and the “Table: UnnamedInput” is shown on the right. We see the only field in the “UnnamedInput” table is the “1 | Line | memo”.

We are going to submit the “Line” field from the database to the “term | for * Limits | Human cancer” input of the form. First click on the input box following the “term”, and then click on the “Line” field, the “Line” field will be shown in the input box:

Finally, click the [Confirm] button. We are done with the batch definition.

Now re-run the Pubmed robot, and we will see it continuously draw input from our list of keywords and do the search with each keyword.