Get value from web document input element with VBA - html

Question

I am having difficult to retrieve value 300 from the input named points.
Here's my HTML and VBA code.
HTML:
<td id="myPower_val_9" style="visibility: visible;">
<input type="text" disabled="disabled" value="300" name="points"></input>
</td>
VBA:
Dim ie As Object
Dim myPoints As String
Set ie = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
With ie
.Visible = 0
.navigate "www.example.com"
While .Busy Or .readyState <> 4
DoEvents
Wend
End With
Dim Doc As HTMLDocument
Set Doc = ie.document
myPoints = Trim(Doc.getElementsByTagName("td")(0).getElementById("myPoints").innerText)
Range("A1").Value = myPoints

Answer 1

HTML Code
I'd try working out the code that manipulates the Document Object Model (DOM) in javascript in a web browser so you can make use of better web based debugging tools.
There are several issues here that a console or debugger could help out with:
You want to get the element ID myPoints but in HTML it's just called points
You want to get the element by ID, but you've only set the name property -
As long as name is unique to the element, you don't need to search for a td first
As you can see from <input></input>, input elements do not have innerText (the text inside the ><). Instead they have a value attribute
The element exposes it's attributes and other data through the properties on the object itself. So you can check the input's value by just looking at .value
Here's a javascript example of what you're trying to do:
var value = document.getElementsByName("points")[0].value;
console.log(value);
<input type="text" disabled="disabled" value="300" name="points" />
Open the console (F12), and you should see 300
VBA
To convert it to VBA code for Excel, just make sure you uses parentheses () for VB arrays instead of square brackets [] for JS arrays:
myPoints = Trim(Doc.getElementsByName("points")(0).Value)
That should work just fine.
References
Since I'm not sure at what point you're failing in VB, also make sure you have all the proper web references in place in your VBA script.
Go to Tools > References > and add "Microsoft HTML Object Library" and "Microsoft Internet Controls":
Demo
I created a demo in plunker so there would be a live site to go against instead of example.com.
Paste the following code into excel and everything should work fine:
Public Sub GetValueFromBrowser()
Dim ie As Object
Dim url As String
Dim myPoints As String
url = "http://run.plnkr.co/plunks/6UTb9kHRZ363Ivhh2BPE/"
Set ie = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
With ie
.Visible = 0
.navigate url
While .Busy Or .readyState <> 4
DoEvents
Wend
End With
Dim Doc As HTMLDocument
Set Doc = ie.document
myPoints = Trim(Doc.getElementsByName("points")(0).Value)
Range("A1").Value = myPoints
End Sub
Output:

Answer 2

CSS selector:
Use a CSS selector to get the element of input[name='points']
You don't show enough HTML to know if this is the only on the page. The above says elements with input tag having attribute name whose value is 'points'
CSS query:
VBA:
You apply the CSS selector with .querySelector method of document for a single element; .querySelectorAll for a nodeList of all matching elements i.e. if there is more than one on the page and you get the one of interest by index.
Debug.Print ie.document.querySelector("input[name='points']").getAttribute("value")

Answer 3

You need to use .getAttribute("name of attribute") to get an attributes value. In your case .getAttribute("value") will return 300.
Dim ie As Object
Dim myPoints As String
Set ie = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
With ie
.Visible = 1
.navigate "website URL"
While .Busy Or .readyState <> 4
DoEvents
Wend
End With
Dim Doc As HTMLDocument
Set Doc = ie.document
myPoints = Trim(Doc.getElementsByTagName("td")(0).getElementsByTagName("input")(0).getAttribute("value"))
Range("A1").Value = myPoints
Just on a side note. I don't know much about HTML and maybe someone can elaborate on this more. But if you want to test that HTML code you need to add in the < table> < tr> tags.
Something like this:
<table>
<tr>
<td id="myPower_val_9" style="visibility: visible;">
<input type="text" disabled="disabled" value="300" name="points"></input>
</td>
</tr>
</table>