VBA & Tabbed Browsing

[Sthrncali]

Good Morning...

Curious if anyone has some experience working with Tabbed Browsing in VBA... I currently have a routine that opens multiple webpages and pulls data into a spreadsheet from those pages. However, I recently came accross some code that will open up the different pages in tabs, as opposed to opening multiple windows at once, and I was trying to modify my code to do the same.


I have gotten it to open my pages successfully in tabs, however the problem I am running into is how to assign each tab to a variable. My original code opened 4 webpages at the same time, and they were identified as such:

Dim IE(4) as Variant
 
For Var = 1 to 4
Set IE(Var) = IEWindow.Navigate HLink
Next

Then the code waited for all 4 pages to load, then it would cycle through all four and pull down HTML code:

For Var = 1 To 4
y = IE(Var).Document.body.innerHTML
'Do something with y
Next

What I have done so far is moved this line out of my loop:

Set IEWindow = CreateObject("INTERNETEXPLORER.APPLICATION")

But then I tried to do

Set IE(Var) = IEWindow.Navigate HLink, 2048

and I get a syntax error. Is there a way to set a tabbed .navigate to a variable so I can refer to it later in the routine?

 

[Norie]

Why do you want to open them in the same instance of IE?

Can't you get the data from the separate instances?

 

[Sthrncali]

I was thinking it may be more efficient systematically to open them in tabbed then seperate instances of IE.

The code actually rolls through about 130 different webpages 6 at time... So currently I open 6 different IE Windows, Navigate to 6 Pages, Wait for them to load, scrub HTML, then close all IE browsers, then cycle through the next 6 links.

Would it not take up less system resources to use 1 instance, 6 tabs, as opposed to 6 instances?

 

[Norie]

I don't know to be sure but if there was a difference then it might not be significant.

There might be other factors as well - connection speeds, traffic etc.

Why are you opening 6 pages at a time anyway?

Are they connected and you need all 6 open at the same time for whatever it is you are doing?

For example. perhaps you need to cross-reference from one page to another?

 

[Sthrncali]

I open 6 at a time because of the source server. Its actually an internal webserver that we query for performance data. The nature of the server is I can load 1 page or 6 pages just a fast... Meaning if it takes 30 seconds for a query to run, and i do them in parallel, I get all 6 queries finished in 30 seconds. The server processes all of them at the same time. Alternatively if I loaded them one at a time, it would take each 30 seconds to run so 30 x 6 = 180 seconds of page loading time.

The wait time is not a product of network traffic, but rather server processing time. So running them in parallel exponentially increases the overall time it takes to download all 130 reports.

If my desktop could support it, I would load 10 at a time but it eats up my local system resources - that's why I wanted to test and see if tabbed browsing would use up less local resources.

 

[Norie]

Sorry

I've searched on this topic before, and today but can't find anything.

I'm sure it can be done but perhaps not do many people have worked on it, so there's nothing to find.

Or I'm looking in the wrong place(s).)

PS Did find some JavaScript stuff but it didn't work for when I tried it as script or when I 'converted' it to VBA.

 

[Sthrncali]

NP thanks for looking!

 

[ian0411]

So Sthrncali, did you find a way to navigate between tabs? I recently need to do a project alike this but couldn't find anything. Thought you probably have an answer since this thread was posted a year ago. If you don't mind, please share your findings if you made it to work. Thank you so much.

Ian

 

[Sthrncali]

Well, yes and no!

I wasn't able to locate/develop any script that was able to navigate tabbed pages directly, but the workaround I used for my purposes (ability to load several pages at once, without loading down local system resources), was to process them without "drawing" the IE windows.

Meaning, setting the property IE.Visible = False, allowed me to process 20x windows at a time, without a noticeable resource drain on my local system.

I accomplished this by creating an Object Array of IE browser's, and looping through them.

Example:

Public IE(20) As Object
Public Dest(20) As String
Public CounterMax As Integer

CounterMax = 0


Do
'ASSIGN ARRAY POSITION USING IE(Counter)
        CounterMax = CounterMax + 1
        Set IE(CounterMax) = CreateObject("INTERNETEXPLORER.APPLICATION")
        Application.Wait 2
        With IE(CounterMax)
            .Visible = False
            .Navigate BookLink
        End With
Loop

'Loop Until All IE Windows Loaded, using whatever logic necessary
'Now you can refer to each individual IE window as IE(x), and process it according.

Example:
------------------------
For i = 1 to CounterMax
IE(i).Quit
Next i
------------------------
'End Example

 

[ian0411]

Interesting point. I will give it a shot and see if this works.

BTW, I have code from Norie to open in a separate window instead of a tab. Please let me know if you want to try that.

Thanks,

Ian