Is there a better way to accomplish this loop? - vba

Question

I'm pretty new with VBA, but I've been muddling through to make a program for my team.
This piece of code works most of the time, but tends to hang on occasion. I can't figure out why it would hang sometimes, and work perfectly most of the time, so I'm now trying to figure out a better way to accomplish this loop. I know that this method of looping isn't the best way to do things, but not sure how to accomplish the task.
My webpage operates in a PEGA Web application, and the native IE ready state indicators are always 'ready' so I have to use the web application's ready state markers.
Can anyone help me out?
Public Sub WaitingForRS()
' FIND THE C360 WINDOW
Marker = 0
Set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application")
IE_count = objShell.Windows.Count
For x = 0 To (IE_count - 1)
On Error Resume Next
my_url = objShell.Windows(x).Document.Location
my_title = objShell.Windows(x).Document.title
If my_title Like "Coverage User" & "*" Then
Set C360Window = objShell.Windows(x)
Marker = 1
Exit For
Else
End If
Next
If Marker = 0 Then
MsgBox ("C360 window is not found. Please ensure C360 is open in Internet Explorer and try again")
Else
End If
'FIND THE READY STATE INDICATOR
RSIndicatorDocMarker = 0
RSIndicatorDataMarker = 0
Set RSIndicatorPage = C360Window.Document
Set RSIndicatorClass = RSIndicatorPage.getelementsbyclassname("document-statetracker")(0)
RSIndicatorCheck:
'CHECK THE READY STATE DOC STATUS
If RSIndicatorClass.getattribute("data-state-doc-status") = "ready" Then
RSIndicatorDocMarker = 1
Else: RSIndicatorDocMarker = 0
End If
'CHECK THE READY STATE
If RSIndicatorClass.getattribute("data-state-busy-status") = "none" Then
RSIndicatorDataMarker = 1
Else: RSIndicatorDataMarker = 0
End If
'Compare the RSIndicators
If RSIndicatorDataMarker = 1 And RSIndicatorDocMarker = 1 Then
Else: GoTo RSIndicatorCheck
End If
End Sub

Answer 1

Maybe try using OnTime instead of the tight loop you currently have:
Public Sub WaitingForRS()
Dim win As Object
Dim w As Object, el, ready As Boolean, idle As Boolean
For Each w In CreateObject("Shell.Application").Windows
If w.Name Like "*Internet*" Then
If w.Title Like "Coverage user*" Then
Set win = w
Exit For
End If
End If
Next
If Not win Is Nothing Then
Set el = win.document.getelementsbyclassname("document-statetracker")(0)
ready = (el.getattribute("data-state-doc-status") = "ready")
idle = (el.getattribute("data-state-busy-status") = "none")
If ready And idle Then
ProceedWithNextSteps win 'do whatever comes next: pass in the window
Else
'wait for a while then try again
Application.OnTime Now + TimeSerial(0, 0, 1), "WaitingForRS"
End If
Else
MsgBox "Window not found!"
End If
End Sub
Might want to add a time limit so it doesn't keep looping forever if the page isn't "ready".

Answer 2

Check out my answer on this post Excel VBA Submitting data via IE on an online MS Forms not working
# Idea 5 subheading. The WaitForLoadSETx() function has a manual time over-ride and double loop to help catch the state.
This was the best I could do in VBA with IE object. Ideally you want to learn Selenium, PhantomJS, or Puppeteer for actual browser manipulation. There are of course cool apps, folks have built on top of these libraries to help (puppeteer recorder chrome add in)
Or to keep things in Excel, use a simple XMLHTTPRequest object to cut the browser out of the equation, and deal solely with the request / response from the web page. This is a good alternative because it lets you focus on scraping the html content, in text form without the Javascript or waiting for page to load.