[Resolved] Automatically save all pictures shown in Internet Explorer using VBA macro

[ursulala]

Hello,

I am using a Excel VBA macro to control the Internet Explorer (IE = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application") ... IE.Navigate ...). Now I would like to save to hard disk all pictures that are currently visible on the IE, WITHOUT navigating again to a special picture-URL (so I cannot use html parsing or Wget-Tools). How to do that?

Many Thanks,
Ursula

[si_the_geek]

Thread moved from "VB6" forum to 'Office Development/VBA' forum

[westconn1]

there is a recent thread, last few months, (or more than one) in the vb6 forum to do exactly this (from a webbrowser control i think), i believe it would still all work in vba, but you will need to do a search to find the thread, i did have some input in the thread

[ursulala]

Thank a lot, I see that DragonBay for example had the same problem as I. I will go through that tomorrow as here in Europe it is already late in the evening. I will let you know if problem is fixed.
Good night, Ursula

[His Nibbs]

Get the collection of HTML image elements using GetElementsByTagName("IMG"), then use URLDownloadToFile to download each one. The former function is part of the MS HTML Object library.

[westconn1]

I see that DragonBay for example

i believe that was the tread i was thinking of

[ursulala]

I think, it's not a solution to use URLDownloadToFile since I don't know it's url and it's not stored on the server.

The problem with this image is that it's url is not fixed and it can't be requested for twice from the server cause it's generated automatically every time (it is a validation picture),
so the server doesn't hold a copy of this image...

DragonBoy described the same problem in VB6 forum, I will go through the staff and see whether DragonBoy got a solution.

DragonBoy has already described the same problem in VB6 forum, I will go through the staff and see whether DragonBoy got a solution.

[westconn1]

And how to do this if verification img does not have a name:

<img src="/sw/verification/verif.php?c=login" alt="captcha" class="captcha"/>

Thanx a lot !

i decided to answer this in your own thread
loop through all the images to find the one with some correct value

for each ele in wb.document.getelementsbytagname("img")
  if instr(ele.innerhtml, "alt=""captcha""") > 0 then exit for
next
'ele i now an object of that specific image

it may be possible that alt is a property of the image, then you could just use
if ele.alt.value = "captcha" then exit for
but i was not sure so used instr

[ursulala]

Thanks to all of you, especially to westconn1 !
I use ele.getAttribute("src") instead of ele.innerhtml since the result of innerhtml always was empty. I suppose img is not really a full tag with open and close. Now it works relatively fine, only some fine tuning is still necessary.
Ursula

[manager25]

Give you a more simple example. I use msinet to get source form website and after that prasing it
You add
a command button ( and add this following code )
a inet named inet1
a textbox named text1
a listview named lv

   
    Dim d As Integer
    Dim a As String
    Dim b() As String
    Dim c As Integer
    lv.Clear 

    a = Inet1.OpenURL(Text1.Text)
    b = Split(a, "img src=")
    For c = 1 To UBound(b)

                lv.ItemAdd lv.Count + 1, spt(b(c), """", """")

    Next c

    lv.ColumnAutosize 1, caItem
    Clipboard.Clear
    Timer1.Enabled = True



End Function

Function spt(str As String, a As String, b As String)
    On Error Resume Next
    Dim a1() As String
    Dim a2() As String
    a1 = Split(str, a)
    a2 = Split(a1(1), b)
    spt = a2(0)
End Function

I wrote this code in notepad ( I don't have vb6 on my computer ) so it may have some problems. You can modify to suit your purpose
( Sorry for my poor english )

[robs23i]

i decided to answer this in your own thread
loop through all the images to find the one with some correct value

for each ele in wb.document.getelementsbytagname("img")
  if instr(ele.innerhtml, "alt=""captcha""") > 0 then exit for
next
'ele i now an object of that specific image

it may be possible that alt is a property of the image, then you could just use
if ele.alt.value = "captcha" then exit for
but i was not sure so used instr

Welcome everybody!
Sorry for digging it up again but Your post was actually the only one that seems to help resolving this problem. I'm struggling on 2 other forums now and try to explain the problem, but no one seems to understand even a bit.
My question is: what actually is returned by this function in varieable "ele"? I think it's something like this:

ele = <img src="someWWW" alt=captcha"/>

. What code (method, function) let me save it as an image?

Thank You for any help..

[westconn1]

My question is: what actually is returned by this function in varieable "ele"

an object containing the html element from the webpage, with its properties and methods

What code (method, function) let me save it as an image?

if you have the src url from the element, you can use urldownloaedtofile API to save the src to disk

[robs23i]

Thank You for answer!
And will this method save picture that's allready loaded in browser? Because reloading it will completly change the picture...

[robs23i]

Well, if it can't be saved from IE tamplate maybe it can be save by prinscreen'ing whole site and cropping it to size of disered image? What do you think?

[westconn1]

probably trying to beat captchas, would be against the acceptable use policy of this site

[robs23i]

Well, probably yes, but I'm not the one who has started this topic anyway Apart from that, no one wants to beat captcha, it is in educational purposes only..

[westconn1]

you should be able to copy the picture to clipboard, then save to file

you could try the execwb method of the internet explorer instance to copy the image