RCHGetWebData() Documentation

Documentation for RCHGetWebData() function

Description

Extracts source data from a web page. The primary purpose of this function is for testing, to examine the web page data being returned to VBA for processing. However, it can also be used for ad hoc extractions of data from a web page that isn't table oriented.

Syntax

=RCHGetWebData( URL, [Position], [Length], [Offset] )

Parameters

URL	= Web page to retrieve source data to extract from.
Position	= An optional parameter that has a default value of 1, indicating either: A number indicating an absolute position on the page to begin the extraction of data A string to search for on the page to indicate a relative position on the page to begin the extraction of data
Length	= An optional parameter that has a default value of 32767 (the maximum possible value), indicating the length of the data to extract from the web page.
Offset	= An optional parameter that has a default value of 0, indicating the relative position to offset from parameter "Position" for extraction of data from the web page.

Examples

To retieve the first 32767 bytes of the Yahoo! Key Statistics page for ticker symbol "IHR":

=RCHGetWebData("http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=IHR")
To retrieve successive data from the same web page, you could use these additional formulas:

=RCHGetWebData("http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=IHR",32768,32767)

=RCHGetWebData("http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=IHR",65535,32767)
...more to come

Usage notes

A value of "Error" is returned if the "Position" or "Length" values are invalid for the web page. However, if the "Position" is within the web page and the "Length" would cause the extraction to go outside of the web page, the "Length" is reset so the extraction only goes to the length of the web page.
...more to come