Data Extraction from Website

[dbrown14]

I need help trying to retrieve the source code from a website.

How I normally navigate there:

I start at http://www.bls.gov/home.htm, scroll over Subject Areas, click Consumer Price Index, click Top Picks button for All Urban Consumers database (probably have to scroll down a little), check off Midwest Region All Items, 1982-1984=100 - CUUR0200SA0, click Retrieve Data, click More Formatting Options, check 3 Month Percent Change, then finally click Retrieve Data.

I'm pretty sure there are ways of getting the source code of this webpage using the xmlhttp object and the post method, but I don't know how. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I would prefer to use xmlhttp if possible, but I'm open to other methods.

 

[dbrown14]

bump

 

[dbrown14]

Bump

 

[poolhall]

I don't know how to achieve what you're asking but with the iMacro add-on in your browser you can record the sequence of the above steps, and then reproduce them in one click.

 

[John_w]

Your thread title says 'Data Extraction', but your post asks how to retrieve the source code. An XMLhttp request can retrieve the source code and then more VBA is needed to parse the response in some way to retrieve the data.

If you view the HTML source for the final data page (http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet), you will see the form fields and values which need to be sent with the request. Your VBA code will need to construct this string and send it in a POST request. Something like this:

XMLhttp.Open "POST", "http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet", False
XMLhttp.send formData
'Response is in XMLhttp.responseText