Scraping Web With VBA to return Data while matching conditions - excel

Question

I hope this question is not in other post since I have searched and not found an answer. I'm also quite new to programming but specially to scraping the web. If you guys know of any good, complete tutorial, I'll appreciate if you can direct me to it. I work with VBA and Python.
I begun working after reading this: Scraping data from website using vba
Very helpful, by the way. I understood the old method better so I chose that one.
The site I want to search in is: http://www.bcra.gob.ar/PublicacionesEstadisticas/Principales_variables.asp
The code I've written so far:
Sub Test()
Dim ie As Object
Dim form As Variant, button As Variant
Set ie = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
Dim TR_col As Object, TR As Object
Dim TD_col As Object, TD As Object
Dim xx As Object, x As Object
With ie
.Visible = True '< Show browser window
.navigate ("http://www.bcra.gob.ar/PublicacionesEstadisticas/Principales_variables.asp") '> Travel to homepage
Do While ie.Busy
DoEvents
Loop '< Wait for page to have loaded
End With
Set TR_col = ie.Document.getElementsByTagName("TR")
For Each TR In TR_col
Set xx = ie.Document.getElementsByTagName("a")
If xx = "Base Monetaria - Promedio acumulado del mes (MM de $)" Then
Cells(1, 1) = "Ok"
End If
Next TR
End Sub
Lastly, this is the Inspector looks like:
[![enter image description here][1]][1]
[1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/YoG4H.png
I also highlighted the piece of information I'm using for testing purposes.
So, my approach is to search for all the "tr" tags and then validate whether the first column of the table (I guess this would be the first "td" tag) is equal to a text I'll have in a cell (in this case I just wrote in text for testing purposes). The result should be copying the number next to the date to a cell in the worksheet. In this case I wrote "Ok" just to see whether the if statement was working. But it isn't.
I guess I'm not sure how tell VBA to search for all "tr" tags, search for all the "td" tags within each "tr", find the one that matches some text, and return the 3rd "td" tag within that "tr". Makes sense?
Hope I've been specific enough and that someone can guide me.

Answer 1

It's not necessary to load whole browser to get HTML - you can do without it.
Sub Test()
'// References required:
'// 1) Microsoft HTML Object Library
'// 2) Microsoft XML, v6.0
Dim req As MSXML2.XMLHTTP60
Dim doc As MSHTML.HTMLDocument
Dim tbl As MSHTML.HTMLTable
Dim tblRow As MSHTML.HTMLTableRow
Dim tblCell As MSHTML.HTMLTableCell
Dim anch As MSHTML.HTMLAnchorElement
Dim html$, url$, sText$, fecha$, valor$, j%
Set req = New MSXML2.XMLHTTP60
url = "http://www.bcra.gob.ar/PublicacionesEstadisticas/Principales_variables.asp"
Set req = New MSXML2.XMLHTTP60
req.Open "GET", url, False
req.send
html = req.responseText
Set doc = New MSHTML.HTMLDocument
doc.body.innerHTML = html
Set tbl = doc.getElementsByClassName("table-BCRA")(, 0)
For j = 1 To tbl.Rows.Length - 1
With tbl.Rows(j)
'// Skip cells without data.
'// Assume correct data has three cells.
If .Cells.Length = 3 Then
Set anch = .Cells(0)
sText = anch.textContent
If sText = "Base Monetaria - Promedio acumulado del mes (MM de $)" Then
fecha = .Cells(1).innerText
valor = .Cells(2).innerText
End If
End If
End With
Next
End Sub