VBA convert unusual string to Date - vba

Question

I wanted to scrape data from yahoo as an excercise and then make a graph from it. I encountered a problem where when I scrape the dates, they are in a rather weird format:
?10? ?Aug?, ?2020
The question marks in the string are not realy question marks, they are some characters unknown to me, so I cannot remove them with Replace().
Then, when I try to use CDate() to convert this to Date format, the code crashed on "Type mismatch" error.
What I would need is to either find a way to find out what those characters are in order to remove them with Replace(), or to somehow convert even this weird format to a Date.
Alternatively, somehow improving the scraping procedure - so far I've been using for example
ie.document.getElementsByClassName("Py(10px) Ta(start) Pend(10px)")(3).innerText
to get the data - would also solve this problem.
If anyone wanted to try to scrape it, too an example url:
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/LAC/history?period1=1469404800&period2=1627171200&interval=1d&filter=history&frequency=1d&includeAdjustedClose=true
An example of my code follows:
DateString = doc.getElementsByClassName("Py(10px) Ta(start) Pend(10px)")(j).innerText
LeftDateString = Clean_NonPrintableCharacters(DateString)
Worksheets("Stock_data").Range("A2").Value = CDate(LeftDateString)

Answer 1

With regexp:
Function GetDate(txt)
' set a reference to 'Microsoft VBScript Regular Expression 5.5' in Tools->References VBE menu
Dim re As New RegExp, retval(0 To 2), patterns, i, result
patterns = Array("\b\d\d\b", "\b[a-zA-Z]+\b", "\b\d{4}\b")
For i = 0 To 2
re.Pattern = patterns(i)
Set result = re.Execute(txt)
If result Is Nothing Then Exit Function 'If no day, month or year is found, GetDate() returns ""
retval(i) = result(0)
Next
GetDate = Join(retval)
End Function
Sub Usage()
For Each txt In Array("?10? ?Aug?, ?2020", "Jul 13, 2020", "2021, March?, 18?")
Debug.Print GetDate(txt)
Next
End Sub
Prints:
10 Aug 2020
13 Jul 2020
18 March 2021
Edit 2
Function GetDate2(txt)
' set a reference to 'Microsoft VBScript Regular Expression 5.5' in Tools->References VBE menu
Static re As RegExp, months As Collection
Dim result
If re Is Nothing Then 'do it once
Set re = New RegExp
re.Pattern = "[^a-zA-Z0-9]"
re.Global = True
Set months = New Collection
cnt = 1
For Each m In Split("jan,feb,mar,apr,may,jun,jul,aug,sep,oct,nov,dec", ",")
months.Add cnt, m
cnt = cnt + 1
Next
End If
result = Split(WorksheetFunction.Trim(re.Replace(txt, " ")))
For i = 0 To UBound(result)
If Not IsNumeric(result(i)) Then
result(i) = Left(LCase(result(i)), 3)
On Error Resume Next
result(i) = months(result(i))
On Error GoTo 0
End If
Next
result = Join(result)
If IsDate(result) Then GetDate2 = CDate(result)
End Function
Sub Usage2()
For Each txt In Array("?10? ?Aug?, ?2020", "Jul 13, 2020", "2021, March?, 18?", _
"01/12/2021", "04.18.2020", "15 10 20")
Debug.Print GetDate2(txt)
Next
End Sub
Prints:
10.08.2020
13.07.2020
18.03.2021
01.12.2021
18.04.2020
15.10.2020
Note. The order of the dd and mm may be vary

Answer 2

I would use something like so. I've used your ? as question marks for this example, i assumed they were all the same wierd character. This outputs
10 Aug 2020
Sub d()
Dim d As String
d = "?10? ?Aug?, ?2020"
d = Replace(Replace(d, Chr(Asc(Left(d, 1))), vbNullString), ",", vbNullString)
Debug.Print d
End Sub

Answer 3

you could loop though each char in the string and check its ascii values and create your date string from that. Example
Sub GetTheDate(sDate As String)
'97 - 122: lower case Ascii values
Dim i As Integer
Dim strDate As String
'loop through each char
For i = 1 To Len(sDate)
'check to see if it is numeric
If IsNumeric(Mid(sDate, i, 1)) Then
'numeric so add it to the string
strDate = strDate & Mid(sDate, i, 1)
Else
'check to see if it is a char a-z
If Asc(LCase(Mid(sDate, i, 1))) >= 97 And Asc(LCase(Mid(sDate, i, 1))) <= 122 Then
'it is an a char from a-z so add it to string
strDate = strDate & Mid(sDate, i, 1)
Else
'chekc for a space and add a comma - this sets up being able to use cdate()
If Mid(sDate, i, 1) = " " Then
strDate = strDate & ","
End If
End If
End If
Next i
'convert it and print it
Debug.Print CDate(strDate)
End Sub