Look Up Missing Data on Web

  • Thread starter Thread starter vjp2.at
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vjp2.at

How do you write VB that runs a web query and gets data (eg, zoning lot
number, event date) for an exsiting record that has that field blank? I
would want to put some sort of delay in it and make it run in the background
so it doesn't mess with other things, including the web ource. I would also
want to be able to change it as the web source changes.

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Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist
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On Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:16:05 +0000 (UTC),
(e-mail address removed) wrote:

I have done this, but it is an advanced topic that requires thorough
understanding of the WebBrowser control and especially the DOM =
Document Object Model that web pages use. You can use the DOM to
traverse the HTML of any web page, and extract the information you
need. You would want to write this code in a flexible way so that even
if the designers of the web page change things around a bit, your code
will still work. If there are more major changes your code will likely
break and you have to rewrite some parts.
You should have no problem using your favorite Search engine to find
more information about the above keywords.

-Tom.
Microsoft Access MVP
 
I have done this, but it is an advanced topic that requires
thorough understanding of the WebBrowser control and especially
the DOM = Document Object Model that web pages use. You can use
the DOM to traverse the HTML of any web page, and extract the
information you need.
Click to expand...

Most web pages are so badly structured that I shudder to think about
trying to pull data out of them via the DOM. If I'm scraping pages,
I just read the whole thing into a string variable and work with it
from there.

On the other hand, I'm not doing anything terribly elaborate with
that kind of thing. I really don't think Access is the appropriate
tool for it. And any application that depends on pulling structured
information out of a web page that is not being offered up as a
proper web service is probably built on sand.
 
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