Quitting the IE in the end of VBA function - windows

Question

I implemented several functions which relies on downloading some information from some websites.
The simplest example of such a function is:
Public Function getSomething(webAddress As String)
Dim html As HTMLObjectElement
Set html = getWebContents(webAddress)
Set elems = html.body.getElementsByTagName(tagName)
...
End Function
The function for acquire data from websites is:
Public Function getWebContents(webAddress As String) As HTMLObjectElement
Dim ie As InternetExplorer
Dim html As HTMLDocument
Set ie = New InternetExplorer
ie.Visible = False
ie.Navigate webAddress
Do While ie.READYSTATE <> READYSTATE_COMPLETE
Application.StatusBar = "Trying ..."
DoEvents
Loop
Set getWebContents = ie.Document
'close down IE and reset status bar
'ie.Quit
Set ie = Nothing
Application.StatusBar = ""
End Function
The problem is that it seems that I need the line ie.Quit to be uncommented to close the IE instance. But when I uncomment ie.Quit the line
Set elems = html.body.getElementsByTagName(tagName)
generates errors.
It seems that I cannot use HTMLObjectElement returned by function getWebContents when IE has been quitted. How to deal with that? I could implement a try...finally block in getSomething function and open ie there and close in the finally block. However I have many functions of a similar nature and making many similar try...finally blocks seems a stupid idea.
Any thoughts?
Thanks!

Answer 1

You should define a procedure to handle the object lifetime from creation to destruction. You can then pass a reference for the object to the function.
Lastly, you can dispose the object even if an error occurs at any stange.
Public Sub Main()
On Error GoTo ErrProc
Dim ie As InternetExplorer
Set ie = New InternetExplorer
'....
Dim obj As Object
obj = getWebContents(ie, "url")
Leave:
ie.Quit
Set ie = Nothing
Set obj = Nothing
Application.StatusBar = ""
On Error GoTo 0
Exit Sub
ErrProc:
MsgBox Err.Description, vbCritical
Resume Leave
End Sub
Public Function getWebContents(ie As InternetExplorer, webAddress As String) As HTMLObjectElement
'...
End Function

Answer 2

You are keeping a pointer to the DOM in the html variable. If you close IE, you are pointing to something non-existing.
The simple answer is to close IE at the end of getSomething. In your case, this means that you have to restructure your code so that your IE variable is accessible from other places than in getWebContents