find a string in DOM explorer using VBA - html

Question

I need to find the string in the attached picture using a vba in excel. I have the code below, but it is not finding the date that I am looking for.
The for loop to find is at the last "For Each Element In Elements2"
Dim Doc As HTMLDocument
Dim Elements As IHTMLElementCollection
Dim elements1 As IHTMLElementCollection
Dim Elements2 As IHTMLElementCollection
Dim iCnt As Integer
Dim Element As IHTMLElement
Dim appIE As InternetExplorerMedium
Sheets(1).Cells(1, 1).Value = ""
complete = 0
Set appIE = New InternetExplorerMedium
sURL = "https://example.com"
With appIE
.Navigate sURL
.Visible = True
Do While appIE.Busy Or appIE.ReadyState <> 4
DoEvents
Loop
Do While complete <> 1
Set Doc = appIE.Document
Set Elements = Doc.GetElementsByTagName("input")
Set elements1 = Doc.GetElementsByTagName("strong")
Set Elements2 = Doc.GetElementsByTagName("td")
For Each Element In Elements
If Element.ID = "form-id" Then
requestnumber = Element.GetAttribute("Value")
End If
If Element.ID = "remedy-case-info" Then
CaseInfo = Element.GetAttribute("Value")
End If
Next Element
For Each Element In elements1
If InStr(1, Element.InnerHtml, "EM") Then
For iCnt = 1 To Len(Element.InnerText)
If IsNumeric(Left(Element.InnerText, 2)) Then
NumericOnly (Element.InnerText)
End If
Next iCnt
End If
Next Element
AClientCount = tempcount
For Each Element In Elements2
' If InStr(1, Element.InnerHtml, "td") Then
If InStr(1, Element.InnerHtml, "value-field align-top") Then
Requestdate = Element.GetAttribute("Value")
End If
' End If
Next Element
Set Elements = Nothing
If requestnumber <> "" Then
Sheets(1).Cells(1, 1).Value = requestnumber & " - " & CaseInfo & " - " & tempcount & " - " & Requestdate
complete = 1
End If
Loop
.Quit
End With

Answer 1

The innerHtml property picks up the content within a tag but does not pick up the tag itself. The outerHTML property includes the tag itself as well as the tag's content.
Example:
HTML <p class="fee fie foe fum">bar <b>bat</b> <i>cat</i> car</p>
innerHTML bar <B>bat</B> <I>cat</I> car
outerHTML <P class="fee fie foe fum">bar <B>bat</B> <I>cat</I> car</P>
To perform a text match on an attribute value of an element, you would need to look at the outerHTML property of the element and not the innerHTML property.
However, the class attribute of an element can be accessed via the className property so you could replace the InStr on innerHTML with this:
If InStr(1, Element.className, "value-field align-top") Then
This is not ideal because it would be perfectly valid to write the class names in a different order - e.g. class="align-top value-field" - and this would not be picked up by the InStr function.
It would be better to start with getElementsByClassName (which doesn't care about which order the class names are in) and then use the tagName property to check we have the correct tag, like this:
Set Elements2 = Doc.getElementsByClassName("value-field align-top")
' code for the loops on Elements and Elements1 goes here
For Each Element In Elements2
If Element.tagName = "td" Then
Finally, Element.getAttribute("value") will return Null unless the element has a named attribute called "value". To get the text value of the element, use this instead:
Requestdate = Element.innerText