excel web query in vba - excel

Question

I have a worksheet that currently updates about 200 stocks using Yahoo Finance API and MSXML. I would like to also get some other info from other websites that don't have an api, for example "http://www.earningswhisper.com/stocks.asp?symbol=googl".
Also for example, if you look at some info from that web page below, you see there is a Release Date of 1/29/2015. There is also some text in between, currently "[not confirmed]", but at some point it will change to "[confirmed]" and both items of text are of interest.
For lack of better web skills, I currently have a single sheet with a QueryTable that is refreshed in a code synchronously. It works...eventually. I would rather work with the response in code, but I don't know how to do that. I don't need this particular info to be auto refreshed.
Questions
Is there a preferred VBA way work with the html response? Can you show a code snippet to illustrate?
Is it possible to convert the html to xml or json relatively easy? code snippet?
If QueryTable is in fact the good enough solution, would it be faster to create a sheet for each stock and refresh async, using events?
I know there is oodles of info on the web, but most of it seems dated and confusing. I am using Excel 2013.
I am able to get at the data I want using html and grabbing Table(6) as shown in the code below. I guess I could parse the InnerText but I suspect there is an easier way to grab the elements I need from that table.
Sub TestHtml()
Dim Resp, sText, FirstCode As String
Dim oHttp, oFile, oTable As Object
Dim lines As Variant
Set oHttp = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHttp")
oHttp.Open "GET", "http://www.earningswhisper.com/stocks.asp? symbol=googl", False
oHttp.send ("")
Resp = oHttp.responseText
Set oFile = CreateObject("htmlfile")
oFile.Write Resp
Set oTable = oFile.getElementsByTagName("Table")(6)
sText = oTable.innertext
MsgBox sText
End Sub
Here is a line from that table, and the full table below.
<tr onMouseover="this.className='newsart_s2'" onMouseOut="this.className='newsart'">
<td width="67%" align=left valign=middle> Release Date: <font color='#505050'><small>[not confirmed]</small></font>
</td>
<td width="33%" align=right valign=middle>1/29/2015 </td>
</tr>
What is the best way to drill down and get at the elements in the table, using VBA code?
<TABLE cellpadding=1 cellspacing=0 border=0 id=QEsts width="100%" bgcolor="#505050"><tr><td><TABLE cellpadding=2 cellspacing=0 border=0 width="100%" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" height='148'><tr><td valign=top>
<table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 width="100%" class='newsart'>
<tr><td colspan="2" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><table width="100%" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" cellpadding=1 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr><td style="background-image: url('images/headbar2.gif'); background-color: #000000; BORDER-RIGHT: #000000 thin solid; BORDER-TOP: #000000 thin solid; FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-SIZE: 12px; MARGIN: 2px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 thin solid; COLOR: #e1b64b; BORDER-BOTTOM: #000000 thin solid; FONT-FAMILY: Arial;"> 4th Quarter Ending December 2014</td></tr></table></td></tr>
<tr onMouseover="this.className='newsart_s2'" onMouseOut="this.className='newsart'"><td width="67%" align=left valign=middle> <b>Earnings Whisper</b> <small>&#174</small>: </td><td width="33%" align=right valign=middle><b>$7.24</b> </td></tr>
<tr onMouseover="this.className='newsart_s2'" onMouseOut="this.className='newsart'"><td width="67%" align=left valign=middle> Consensus Estimate:</td><td width="33%" align=right valign=middle>$7.16 </td></tr>
<tr onMouseover="this.className='newsart_s2'" onMouseOut="this.className='newsart'"><td width="67%" align=left valign=middle> Surprise Expectation <small><sup>1</sup></small>: </td><td width="33%" align=right valign=middle> </td></tr>
<tr onMouseover="this.className='newsart_s2'" onMouseOut="this.className='newsart'"><td width="67%" align=left valign=middle> Release Date: <font color='#505050'><small>[not confirmed]</small></font></td><td width="33%" align=right valign=middle>1/29/2015 </td></tr>
<tr><td width="100%" align=right colspan="2" valign=middle>After Close </td></tr>
<tr onMouseover="this.className='newsart_s2'" onMouseOut="this.className='newsart'"><td width="67%" align=left valign=middle> Expected Time <small><sup>2</sup></small>: </td><td width="33%" align=right valign=middle>N/A </td></tr>
<tr onMouseover="this.className='newsart_s2'" onMouseOut="this.className='newsart'"><td width="67%" align=left valign=top> Conference Call: </td><td width="33%" align=right valign=top>4:30 PM ET <small><br> </small></td></tr>
</table>
</td></tr></TABLE></td></tr></TABLE>
</td>

Answer 1

You can interact with DOM since you created that object successfully, but you know in your case the easiest way to get the necessary value from the table above is parsing the InnerText as string, try the code below:
aTmp0 = Split(sText, "Release Date:")
If Ubound(aTmp0) = 1 Then
aTmp1 = Split(aTmp0(1), "Expected Time")
MsgBox aTmp1(0)
Else
MsgBox "Release Date not found"
End If