VBA and MSHTML, extract img ALT attribute from a link

Hi forum,

I'm fairly new to VBA.

Scenario:

I'm using VBA and MSHTML library to extract an anchor text from the URL (back link). Let's say domain.com is linking to domain2.com, so, I'm using this to scan domain.com and see which anchor text it's using to link to domain2.com
Below is an extract from the code, which finds the anchor text which is used in the URL:

=======

HTML Code: 

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My question is: How do I go about a situation where I would like it to return an ALT attribute from a link which doesn't have an anchor but an ALT attribute instead; link format is the following:

<a href="domain2.com"><img src="(image location)" alt="ALTTEXT"/></a>

Basically I'm trying to get it to return ALTTEXT value instead or, even better, check if it has anchor and if not, then return ALTTEXT value.


Thanks.

Hello guitalex ,

The Alt property applies only to an Img object. You would need to check each anchor object for the presence of an image object as child node. If the image object exists then the alt property, if used, can be loaded into the cell (targetRange.Cells(1, 5)). Here is the modified code (untested).

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Hello guitalex,

I am not sure I understand the question. Is "websiteURL" a URL embedded within a link/image or simply any reference to this URL in the page source?

Hello guitalex,

I am not sure I understand the question. Is "websiteURL" a URL embedded within a link/image or simply any reference to this URL in the page source?

Hi Leith,

"websiteURL" - it's any reference to this URL (or even a partial string) found in the page source.

Thank you

p.s. Regarding non-image links: after some testing I've discovered that when I'm using my original approach "... If (InStr(link.href, websiteURL) > 0) Then ... " it doesn't find some of the links for some reason.. not sure why.. I was thinking maybe there's a way of using something else instead of "> 0", like partial string match or something... couldn't come up with solution just yet..

Hello guitalex,

Can you post the HTML page source as a text file? I can then use it to test some ideas.

Hi Leith,

I've attached a txt with the source code.

For example, I'm using "www.cartransport" (without the quotes) as a partial string (websiteURL) to be found in the source code, and it doesn't get detected for some reason. In fact, none of the URLs which this guy has on his homepage can be found using this method..

Using different user agents in vba code didn't help either..

I hope this helps..

Thanks