Scrape a href from HTML but the right one.

[voidale]

Hey guys I'm trying to scrape the right url from html file using webbrowser

I want to scrape this Href and navigate to it. But the problem is every other comment with reply is almost the same. So if I use to scrape hrefs and check the name it will give me the reply buttons of all the comments + the new comment button. Is there a way to grab this link only this one by it's Class name or something?

The One I need:

<a href="forums.php?op=post&amp;p=1409951"><img src="/images/icons/comment_add.png" class="inline_icon" align="top">&nbsp;New Comment</a>

The ones I don't need:

<a href="forums.php?op=post&amp;p=1409971">Reply To This</a>

I'm trying to create my own browser and this should be a button short cut If I want to comment. Thanks a lot.

[voidale]

bump

[J-Deezy]

For each h as htmlElement in WebBrowser1.Document.GetElementsByTagName("a")
    if h.InnerText = "Reply To This" AndAlso System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Match(h.GetAttribute("href"), "forums\.php\?op=post&p=\d*?", System.Text.RegularExpressions.RegexOptions.IgnoreCase).Success Then
        WebBrowser1.Navigate(h.GetAttribute("href"))
        Exit For
    End if
Next

Hope that helps.

[voidale]

For each h as htmlElement in WebBrowser1.Document.GetElementsByTagName("a")
    if h.InnerText = "Reply To This" AndAlso System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Match(h.GetAttribute("href"), "forums\.php\?op=post&p=\d*?", System.Text.RegularExpressions.RegexOptions.IgnoreCase).Success Then
        WebBrowser1.Navigate(h.GetAttribute("href"))
        Exit For
    End if
Next

Hope that helps.

Thanks, It looks like what I need but it won't navigate nothing happens
tried MsgBox to see if there is a link but no msgbox either

[voidale]

bump still need it

[J-Deezy]

The most likely problem would be that either the Regex is not matching, or the inner text is incorrect.

First try this:

For each h As HtmlElement in WebBrowser1.Document.GetElementsByTagName("a")
    if h.InnerText.ToLower.Contains("reply to this") then
        msgbox("found the appropriate innertext")
        if System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Match(h.GetAttribute("href"), "forums\.php\?op=post&p=\d*?").Success Then
            msgbox("match was successful")
            WebBrowser1.Navigate(h.GetAttribute("href"))
            Exit For
        Else
            msgbox("it's the match that's failing" & vbnewLine & h.GetAttribute("href"))
        End If
    End If
Next

And report back what messageboxes, if any, appear.

[newprogram]

it could be that "forums.php?op=post&p=1409971" is not a valid url might have to do WebBrowser1.Navigate("www.thewebsite.com/" & h.GetAttribute("href"))

[stateofidleness]

He said he DOESN'T want the ones that say "Reply to this", but the IF condition says "if it DOES contain that". Wouldn't it be "If Not h.InnerText.ToLower.Contains("reply to this") Then" ?
Also, +1 on the relative URL path. He'll need to append the whole domain name to it. To be even more accurate, before navigating, take the current URL, lop off the filename and append that to the beginning. The forums could be 9 directories deep for all we know.

[J-Deezy]

Sometimes the href in the page source doesn't have a whole URL, but when you access the href attribute it can come up with the entire appended URL, as I can't physically test this; you'll have to do some debugging.

@The incorrect button href, glanced at the thread, simple mistake and simple solution:

if h.InnerText.ToLower.Contains("reply to this") then

change to:

if h.InnerText.ToLower.Contains("new comment") then