How can I strip the element using vbscript and display in message box? - vbscript

Question

I would like to find the price with 2 year contract and display it in a message box. Sofar I have:
Dim MyPage
Dim Price
Set MyPage=CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")
MyPage.load("http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/store/controller?item=phoneFirst&action=viewPhoneDetail&selectedPhoneId=5723")
Wscript.Sleep 2000
Set Price = MyPage.getElementsByTagName("span")
For Each Elem In Price
MsgBox(Elem.firstChild.nodeValue)
Next
I understand that I am completely wrong, but I don't even know where to start. I love writing simple programs like this, but I just need help getting started. Any ideas will help!

Answer 1

Here a better version, uses the HTMLFile object
Dim HTMLDoc, XML, URL, table
Set HTMLDoc = CreateObject("HTMLFile")
Set XML = CreateObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP")
URL = "http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/store/controller?item=phoneFirst&action=viewPhoneDetail&selectedPhoneId=5723"
With XML
.Open "GET", URL, False
.Send
HTMLDoc.Write .responseText
End With
Set spans = HTMLDoc.getElementsByTagName("span")
for each span in spans
WScript.Echo span.innerHTML
next
'=><SPAN>Set Location</SPAN>
'=>Set Location
'=><SPAN>Submit</SPAN>
'=>Submit
'=>Connect with us

Answer 2

the control you use is for reading XML documents, you need something like this
'Create an xmlhttp object, the string depends on the version that is installed
'on your pc could eg also be "Msxml2.ServerXMLHTTP.5.0"
Set xmlhttp = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
xmlhttp.Open "GET", "http://admin:pasword#10.0.0.2/doc/ppp.htm", False
xmlhttp.Send
text=xmlhttp.responseText
wscript.echo text
Set xmlhttp = Nothing
Run a search in your registry for XMLHTTP to get the right string/version for the identifier.
To get the tag from the html you can use the following
text = "blabla <span>this is what i need</span> bla bla<span>second item</span> end"
function getElementsByTagName(sTextToSeachIn, tag)
answer = ""
separator = ""
set oRegExpre = new RegExp
with oRegExpre
.IgnoreCase = true
.Global = true
.MultiLine = True
.Pattern = "<" & tag & ">(.*?)</" & tag & ">"
end with
set oColMatches = oRegExpre.Execute(sTextToSeachIn)
for each match in oColMatches
answer = answer & separator & match.subMatches(0)
separator = "|" 'use something that's not in the spancontents
next
if separator <> "" then
getElementsByTagName = split(answer, separator)
else
getElementsByTagName = array()
end if
end function
for each tag in getElementsByTagName(text, "span")
wscript.echo tag
next
'=>this is what i need
'=>second item
There are better techniques and certainly better languages than vbscript to do this, i suggest to take a look at Ruby which exels in such things.

Answer 3

Alex, in response to your comment about getting a cookie and running a javascript in HTMLFile, here a ruby script i found, hopes it helps you at some point, it reads in a page, passes it to the HTLMFile object and in that DOM executes a remote javascript file. It also gives you an idea of the combined power of activeX and Ruby.
require "win32ole"
$jsxpath_uri = "http://svn.coderepos.org/share/lang/javascript/javascript-xpath/trunk/release/javascript-xpath-latest-cmp.js"
uri, xpath = "http://gist.github.com/gists", "//div[#class='info']/span/a"
http = WIN32OLE.new('MSXML2.XMLHTTP')
http.Open "GET", uri, false
http.Send
text = http.responseText
dom = WIN32OLE.new("htmlfile")
dom.Write(text)
dom.parentWindow.eval(open($jsxpath_uri){|f| f.read })
items = dom.evaluate(xpath, dom, nil, 7, nil)
len = items.snapshotLength
(0...len).each do |i|
item = items.snapshotItem(i)
puts item.innerHTML
end