VBA, search HTML ElementIDs for text string

Question

During a web data scrape I have the following line which works:

IE.document.GetElementById("ct175_tocAccept").Click

The problem is that the company frequently updates their site at inconsistent intervals and changes the above ct# every time. Personally, I don't mind updating it frequently, but realistically that's not an option since I have coworkers who often need these results immediately and are unable to resolve the problem on their own.

Is there a way for me to search all ElementIds on that site for the text "tocAccept" and then click that result? The item does not have a name for me use as an alternative. All suggestions and solutions are greatly appreciated.

Edit: Source:

<div class="checkbox">
            <label for="ctl00_ctl76_g_22c8fb90_9788_4417_b231_10df683e9930_ctl00_tocAccept" class="required" aria-required="true">
                <input name="ctl00$ctl76$g_22c8fb90_9788_4417_b231_10df683e9930$ctl00$tocAccept" type="checkbox" id="ctl00_ctl76_g_22c8fb90_9788_4417_b231_10df683e9930_ctl00_tocAccept" aria-required="true" hasvalidation="true" data-rule-required="true" data-msg-required="Yes, I have read, understand and agree to these terms and conditions is required.">
                Yes, I have read, understand and agree to these terms and conditions</label>
        </div>

The major problem I'm having is that almost every elementid and name on the page uses the ct175 (now updated to ct176) portion. Also, to clarify, I said in the original post that the element does not have a name. The source code I provided does have a name, but there are multiple others that I need to work with that do not have one.

Another approach might be to find the parent node which remains constant and then click the nth child node. I don't do any web scraping with VBA, and don't really recommend it, so that approach might not actually be possible. — CallumDA
– CallumDA, Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 14:35
It is possible but this is headache. Xpath will change any time they add any sybling between. @James: try use wildcard. — MarcinSzaleniec
– MarcinSzaleniec, Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 14:43
Could you provide the source code of the elements with its parent nodes? — T. Nesset
– T. Nesset, Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 14:51
what is the website? you could match the .href or the .innerText — danieltakeshi
– danieltakeshi, Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 15:24

K.Dᴀᴠɪs · Accepted Answer · 2017-11-17 15:38:02Z

2

Obviously was unable to test this without having the site in front of me, but you have two objects you can iterate through, and click the one that meets all criteria, which appears to:

Have a parent class of checkbox
Has a tagname of label

Code:

Option Explicit

Sub TEST()

    ' Code Above

    Dim objCheckbox As Object, objCheckboxes As Object
    Dim objLabel As Object, objLabels As Object
    Set objCheckboxes = ie.document.getElementsByClassName("checkbox")

    For Each objCheckbox In objCheckboxes
        Set objLabels = Nothing
        On Error Resume Next
        Set objLabels = objCheckbox.getElementsByTagName("label")
        On Error GoTo 0
        For Each objLabel In objLabels
            If objLabel.innerText Like "*Yes, I have read, understand and agree*" Then
                objLabel.Click
                Exit For
            End If
        Next objLabel
    Next objCheckbox

End Sub

edited Nov 17, 2017 at 15:38

answered Nov 17, 2017 at 15:28

K.Dᴀᴠɪs

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1 Comment

James Knight Over a year ago

This worked for me. Thanks for this (and to everybody else for the advice).

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