How to scrape data from Bloomberg's website with VBA - excel

Question

Background
Disclaimer: I am a beginner, please bare with my - most plausibly wrong - code.
I want to update currency pairs' value (PREV CLOSE) with a button-enabled-VBA macro. My Excel worksheet contains FX pairs (e.g. USDGBP) on column G:G which are then used to run a FOR loop for every pair in the column.
The value would then be stored in column I:I
Right now, the problem according to the Debugger lies in one line of code that I will highlight below
Sources
I got some inspiration from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxmRjh-S2Ms&t=1050s - notably 17:34 onwards - but I want my code to work for multiple websites at the press of a button.
I have tried the following code
Public Sub Auto_FX_update_BMG()
Application.ScreenUpdating = False 'My computer is not very fast, thus I use this line of
'code to save some computing power and time
Dim internet_object As InternetExplorer
Dim i As Integer
For i = 3 To Sheets(1).Cells(3, 7).End(xlDown).Row
FX_Pair = Sheets(1).Cells(i, 7)
Set internet_object = New InternetExplorer
internet_object.Visible = True
internet_object.navigate "https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/" & FX_Pair & ":CUR"
Application.Wait Now + TimeValue("00:00:05")
internet_object.document.getElementsByClassName("class")(0).getElementsByTagName ("value__b93f12ea") '--> DEBUGGER PROBLEM
'My goal here is to "grab" the PREV CLOSE
'value from the website
With ActiveSheet
.Range(Cells(i, 9)).Value = HTML_element.Children(0).textContent
End With
Sheets(1).Range(Cells(i, 9)).Copy 'Not sure if these 2 lines are unnecesary
ActiveSheet.Paste
Next i
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub
Expected Result
WHEN I enter "USDGBP" on a cell on column G:G, the macro would go to https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/EURGBP:CUR and "grab" the PREV CLOSE value of 0.8732 (using today's value) and insert it in the respective row of column I:I
As of now, I am just facing the debugger without much idea on how to solve the problem.

Answer 1

You can use class selectors in a loop. The pattern
.previousclosingpriceonetradingdayago .value__b93f12ea
specifies to get child elements with class value__b93f12ea having parent with class previousclosingpriceonetradingdayago. The "." in front is a css class selector and is a faster way of selecting as modern browsers are optimized for css. The space between the two classes is a descendant combinator. querySelector returns the first match for this pattern from the webpage html document.
This matches on the page:
You can see the parent child relationship and classes again here:
<section class="dataBox previousclosingpriceonetradingdayago numeric">
<header class="title__49417cb9"><span>Prev Close</span></header>
<div class="value__b93f12ea">0.8732</div>
</section>
N.B. If you are a Bloomberg customer look into their APIs. Additionally, it is very likely you can get this same info from other dedicated APIs which will allow for much faster and more reliable xhr requests.
VBA (Internet Explorer):
Option Explicit
Public Sub test()
Dim pairs(), ws As Worksheet, i As Long, ie As Object
Set ws = ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("Sheet1")
Set ie = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
With ws
pairs = Application.Transpose(.Range("G2:G" & .Cells(.rows.Count, "G").End(xlUp).Row).Value) ' assumes pairs start in row 2
End With
Dim results()
ReDim results(1 To UBound(pairs))
With ie
.Visible = True
For i = LBound(pairs) To UBound(pairs)
.Navigate2 "https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/" & pairs(i) & ":CUR", False
While .Busy Or .readyState < 4: DoEvents: Wend
results(i) = .document.querySelector(".previousclosingpriceonetradingdayago .value__b93f12ea").innerText
Next
.Quit
End With
ws.Cells(2, "I").Resize(UBound(results), 1) = Application.Transpose(results)
End Sub
For very limited numbers of requests (as leads to blocking) you could use xhr request and regex out the value. I assume pairs are in sheet one and start from G2. I also assume there are no empty cells or invalid pairs in column G up to an including last pair to search for. Otherwise, you will need to develop the code to handle this.
Try regex here
Option Explicit
Public Sub test()
Dim re As Object, pairs(), ws As Worksheet, i As Long, s As String
Set ws = ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("Sheet1")
Set re = CreateObject("VBScript.RegExp")
With ws
pairs = Application.Transpose(.Range("G2:G" & .Cells(.rows.Count, "G").End(xlUp).Row).Value) ' assumes pairs start in row 2
End With
Dim results()
ReDim results(1 To UBound(pairs))
With CreateObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP")
For i = LBound(pairs) To UBound(pairs)
.Open "GET", "https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/" & pairs(i) & ":CUR", False
.send
s = .responseText
results(i) = GetCloseValue(re, s, "previousClosingPriceOneTradingDayAgo%22%3A(.*?)%2")
Next
End With
ws.Cells(2, "I").Resize(UBound(results), 1) = Application.Transpose(results)
End Sub
Public Function GetCloseValue(ByVal re As Object, inputString As String, ByVal pattern As String) As String 'https://regex101.com/r/OAyq30/1
With re
.Global = True
.MultiLine = True
.IgnoreCase = False
.pattern = pattern
If .test(inputString) Then
GetCloseValue = .Execute(inputString)(0).SubMatches(0)
Else
GetCloseValue = "Not found"
End If
End With
End Function

Answer 2

Try below code:
But before make sure to add 2 reference by going to Tools> References > then look for Microsoft HTML Object Library and Microsoft Internet Controls
This code works upon using your example.
Sub getPrevCloseValue()
Dim ie As Object
Dim mySh As Worksheet
Set mySh = ThisWorkbook.Sheets("Sheet1")
Dim colG_Value As String
Dim prev_value As String
For a = 3 To mySh.Range("G" & Rows.Count).End(xlUp).Row
colG_Value = mySh.Range("G" & a).Value
Set ie = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
ie.Visible = True
ie.navigate "https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/" & colG_Value & ":CUR"
Do While ie.Busy: DoEvents: Loop
Do Until ie.readyState = 4: DoEvents: Loop
'Application.Wait (Now + TimeValue("00:00:03")) 'activate if having problem with delay
For Each sect In ie.document.getElementsByTagName("section")
If sect.className = "dataBox previousclosingpriceonetradingdayago numeric" Then
prev_value = sect.getElementsByTagName("div")(0).innerText
mySh.Range("I" & a).Value = prev_value
Exit For
End If
Next sect
Next a
I have a video tutorial for basic web automation using vba which include web data scraping and other commands, please check the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jejwXID4OH4&t=700s