-ADVICE REQUEST- MS-ACCESS Hyperlink Comparison Script Advice - database

Question

I'm brand new to MS-Access and had a few guideline-questions,
My organization uses MS-Access to track a large electronic-part inventory. These parts have a hyperlink field that links to the product webpage. Here's an example:
Part Number Part Type Value Description Component_Height Voltage Tolerance Schematic Part Layout PCB Footprint Manufacturer Part Number Manufacturer Distributor Part Number Distributor Price Availability Link
UMK105CG100DV-F Ceramic 10pF CAP CER 10PF 50V NP0 0402 0.35 MM 50V ±0.5pF xxxxx\C_NP,xxxxx\C_NP_Small c_0402 UMK105CG100DV-F Taiyo Yuden 587-1947-2-ND Digi-Key 0.00378 In Stock http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/UMK105CG100DV-F/587-1947-2-ND/1473246
Links Here:
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/UMK105CG100DV-F/587-1947-2-ND/1473246
Nearly the entire majority of our hyperlinks point to the supplier DigiKey.
Right now the verification flow goes like this:
Every month or so a large group of us sits down and one by one copies the hyperlink into google.
We then open the corresponding webpage and verify component availability etc.
We have nearly 1000 components and this process takes hours. All I'm looking for is advice on how to improve our workflow. I was hoping there was say a way to write a "open hyperlink with default browser and search string" macro or scripting interface. The pseudo-script would then check that the string "Quantity Available" was greater than 1, and if it wasn't (the part was out of stock) mark the part as obsolete.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated, I'm really aiming to optimize our workflow.

Answer 1

You can traverse the DOM of the web page. A quick look at the web page and you can see a table with a name of product-details.
So the following VBA code would load the sample web page, and pull out the values.
Option Compare Database
Option Explicit
Enum READYSTATE
READYSTATE_UNINITIALIZED = 0
READYSTATE_LOADING = 1
READYSTATE_LOADED = 2
READYSTATE_INTERACTIVE = 3
READYSTATE_COMPLETE = 4
End Enum
Sub GetWebX()
Dim ie As New InternetExplorer
Dim HTML As New HTMLDocument
Dim strURL As String
Dim Htable As New HTMLDocument
Dim i As Integer
strURL = "http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/UMK105CG100DV-F/587-1947-2-ND/1473246"
ie.Navigate strURL
Do While ie.READYSTATE < READYSTATE_COMPLETE
DoEvents
Loop
Set HTML = ie.Document
Set Htable = HTML.getElementById("product-details")
For i = 0 To Htable.Rows.Length - 1
With Htable.Rows(i)
Debug.Print Trim(.Cells(0).innerText), Trim(.Cells(1).innerText)
End With
Next I
ie.Quit
Set ie = Nothing
End Sub
output of above:
Digi-Key Part Number 587-1947-2-ND
Quantity Available 230,000
Can ship immediately
Manufacturer Taiyo Yuden
Manufacturer Part Number UMK105CG100DV-F
Description CAP CER 10PF 50V NP0 0402
Expanded Description 10pF ±0.5pF 50V Ceramic Capacitor C0G, NP0 0402(1005 Metric)
Lead Free Status / RoHS Status Lead free / RoHS Compliant
Moisture Sensitivity Level (MSL) 1 (Unlimited)
Manufacturer Standard Lead Time 11 Weeks
Since the above is a array, then you could place a button right on the form, and have a few extra lines of VBA to write the values into the form. So a user would just have to go to the given record/form in Access - press a button and the above values would be copied right into the form.
the above VBA code requires a reference to:
Microsoft Internet Controls
Microsoft HTML Object Library
I would suggest that after testing you use late binding for the above two libraries.