Scraping current date from website using Excel VBA - excel

Question

Error
Librarys
I need the date of the current day. I do not want to place it inside a variable to be able to have it work, instead I would like that variable to be Date or in its default String.
Sub WEB()
Dim IE As Object
Dim allelements As Object
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Set IE = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
IE.navigate "http://www.fechadehoy.com/venezuela"
Do Until IE.ReadyState = 4
DoEvents
Loop
Application.Wait (Now + TimeValue("0:00:01"))
IE.document.getElementById ("date")
IE.Visible = True
Set IE = Nothing
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub
The website is http://www.fechadehoy.com/venezuela
I only need the date of this page. I am not interested in any other element of the macro.
I just need to extract the current date and get it in a variable.

Answer 1

if you need Lunes, 19 de agosto de 2019 then use getElementById for fecha
Debug.Print IE.document.getElementById("fecha").Innerhtml

Answer 2

Why go for IE when xhr can do the trick? You can get the date with the blink of an eye if you opt for XMLHttpRequest.
Sub GetCurrentDate()
Dim S$
With New XMLHTTP
.Open "GET", "http://www.fechadehoy.com/venezuela", False
.send
S = .responseText
End With
With New HTMLDocument
.body.innerHTML = S
MsgBox .getElementById("fecha").innerText
End With
End Sub
Reference to add:
Microsoft XML, v6.0
Microsoft HTML Object Library
To get rid of that reference altogether:
Sub GetCurrentDate()
Dim S$
With CreateObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP")
.Open "GET", "http://www.fechadehoy.com/venezuela", False
.send
S = .responseText
End With
With CreateObject("htmlfile")
.body.innerHTML = S
MsgBox .getElementById("fecha").innerText
End With
End Sub

Answer 3

Although the answer given by #Siddharth Rout is perfectly fine, it would require quite a bit of string manipulation to get the date in a usable form.
For the above reason I'm providing an alternative solution which gets the date in a directly usable format, ready to be manipulated and used in further calculations if necessary.
As a bonus I am demonstrating how to get the date using an HTTP request instead of using the Internet Explorer. This makes the code more efficient.
Option Explicit
Sub getDate()
Dim req As New WinHttpRequest
Dim doc As New HTMLDocument
Dim el As HTMLParaElement
Dim key As String
Dim url As String
Dim retrievedDate As Date
url = "http://www.fechadehoy.com/venezuela"
key = "Fecha actual: "
''''''''''Bonus: Use an HTTP request to get the date instead of opening IE'''''''''''
With req '
.Open "GET", url, False '
.send '
doc.body.innerHTML = .responseText '
'Debug.Print .responseText '
End With '
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
For Each el In doc.getElementsByTagName("p")
If el.innerText Like "Fecha actual*" Then
retrievedDate = Mid(el.innerText, InStr(el.innerText, key) + Len(key), Len(el.innerText))
End If
Next el
End Sub
You will need to add a reference to Microsoft HTML Object Libraryand Microsoft WinHTTP Services version 5.1. To do that, go to VB editor>Tools>References.
Having the date in this format, means it can easily be manipulated. An example would be the use of functions like day(retrievedDate) , month(retrievedDate), year(retrievedDate) etc.