I'm writing a function to scrape data from a website using xpath strings like this:
//*[#id="mw-content-text"]/div/table[1]/tbody/tr[14]
As Obvious, when I assign this string to a variable I get a syntax error due to the presence of the quotation marks.
I already know some ways to manually correct the text and avoid errors.
My question is if there's a way to put the text into a variable "as it is".
Thanks in advance.
There is no problem at all assigning this string to a variable "as is". E.g. write the string(s) into a table and read it from a recordset.
But if you want to hard-code the string in your VBA source code, you need to escape the quotes by duplicating them.
Const xPath As String = "//*[#id=""mw-content-text""]/div/table[1]/tbody/tr[14]"
Related
I have problem with Datatables search by column or in general when variable has value like this
var = 'Company "name" ';
When i searchin like name it works correctly, but when i paste exact value Company "name" there is no results i guess the problem is in quotation marks maybe someone found solution? because those trings with quotation marks is in my DB.
My problem solution was use PHP. What I did changed array object property value using str_replace before pushing data to Datatables. So in db those values with quotation marks but when data goes to datatable those values without quotation marks
I am investigating a bug in an Excel spreadsheet where the following formula is inserted into every cell in a column.
=AGGREGATE( 3, 5, InputData[#[Foo]:[Bar]]) > 0
The VBA is as follows:
Let AddColumn.DataBodyRange.formula = "=AGGREGATE( 3, 5, [#[Foo]:[Bar]]) > 0"
this will evaluate to FALSE if all of the cells on the current row between columns Foo and Bar are empty, otherwise it evaluates to TRUE
The problem I'm seeing is that the names Foo and Bar are variable and not under my control and the formula fails with Run-time error 1004 if a name contains a single quote:
Let AddColumn.DataBodyRange.formula = "=AGGREGATE( 3, 5, [#[Foo's name]:[Bar]]) > 0"
Is there a way I can escape the name in such a way that single quotes won't create the run-time error? Adding double quotes around the name gives me the same error.
Are there likely to be further problems if the names contain other characters that have special meaning in Excel?
I could also refer to the columns by address instead of name. Would that work with the current row '#' notation?
Excel version:14.0.7188.5002
I hear you when you say the naming convention is "not under my control". This really puts you in a bind when anything can be pumped into your code.
Sadly, the only solution is to scrub the input when they finally hand it over to you. This involves you having to make your own vba function that takes in a string and returns a string that has special characters removed (or replaced with something else).
In your case, you are going to have to scrub the data in possibly two places.
First, you will need to change all the column names so they don't have special characters in them. You'll need to access each name and send it through the 'scrub' function and then replace the name with the scrubbed name.
Second, when someone inputs a column name for your AGGREGATE, you'll need to capture that input into a string variable and then pass that through the 'scrub' function. Then you'll need to validate that the input they gave you matches up with a valid column name. If it's not valid, send them an error message asking them to enter a valid name or to cancel out.
After you have valid values for foo and bar, you can add them to your AGGREGATE function and let it execute.
If you can't scrub/change your column names, then you'll have to make a list of scrubbed column names and associate them with the column address. Then when you get your input, scrub it, and then match to the list to grab the correct address. Then you can use hard addresses instead of variable naming schemes.
It's a lot of work. But it's necessary when you have naming conventions that are not under your control.
The other answers and comments put me on the right track:
Function escapedColumnName(columnName As String) As String
columnName = Replace(columnName, "'", "''")
columnName = Replace(columnName, "#", "'#")
columnName = Replace(columnName, "[", "'[")
columnName = Replace(columnName, "]", "']")
escapedColumnName = columnName
End Function
I need help translating a common Excel function, into VBA code.
Please see attached screenshot for the code I already have started.
I am using the calculations seen in the screenshot to build a scorecard/grading worksheet. I will need to adjust the rows in each of these, but never the columns.
Once I figure this out, I will then loop these to repeat for each new row as they are added.
image of my code, so far
When a literal string needs to contain double-quote characters, you need to use two double-quotes in a row for each double-quote you need in the string.
So your string
Range("AP4").Formula = "SUM(COUNTIFS(J3:AR3,{"0","1"}))"
needs to look like this:
Range("AP4").Formula = "SUM(COUNTIFS(J3:AR3,{"“0"”,""1""}))"
You can also do this without putting the formula into the content of the cell like this:
Range("AP4") = WorksheetFunction.SUM(WorksheetFunction.COUNTIFS(J3:AR3,{""0"",""1""}))
I'm using VB.NET, and my code contains a lot of strings that very often have double quotes inside of them. My problem is that as I'm fixing the string to escape double quotes (replacing every '"' with '""' inside of the string) it messes with the proceeding code, temporarily assuming everything is a string (since the double quotes don't match up) and completely messing up the formatting of other strings. It assumes that the start of a following string is the end of the current string which causes the actual string to be interpreted and formatted as code, which I have to go back and fix (since it adds spaces and other formatting characters that shouldn't actually be there).
Is there any way to disable this behavior? I didn't have the same problem in VS2013. I've been looking under Tools > Options > Text Editor > Basic, but I couldn't find anything relevant.
Additional Information: I can just modify the strings in a separate text document to escape all of the double-quotes (which is what I've resorted to for now), but in VS2013 I could easily just copy/paste the strings directly into my code without it messing up proceeding strings by temporarily interpreting them as code due to the uneven count of double-quotes.
This behavior is especially problematic when manually adding double-quotes within strings, because if you don't escape them quickly enough (or make a brief typo when doing so), you get the same issue.
You might notice that for other languages, such as C++, writing a string on one line (even with an uneven number of double-quotes) does not affect proceeding lines. Having this same behavior for VB would be great, assuming that there's some setting to enable it.
Yes its an inconvenience.
What I usually do is put some non-used character (e.g. some unused symbol on keyboard, or Alt+{some number}) instead of double quotes. When I'm done building my string whatever way I want, I just finalize it with either bringing up the Find and Replace box and replace that character with two double-quotes. Or just put a REPLACE statement immediately following it, replacing that character with Chr(34).
Instead use Chr(34), or if you end up repeating strings at all, store them as a resource.
I have a text file which contains about 60 lines. I would like to parse out all the text from that file and display in a window. The text file contains words that are separated by an underscore. I would like to use regular expression to solve this problem.
Update:
This is my code as of now. I am trying to read "filename" in my code.
Dim filename = "D:\databases.txt"
Dim regexpression As String = "/^[^_]*_([^_]*)\w/"
I know I don't have much done here anyway but I am trying to learn VB on my own and have gotten stuck here.
Please feel free to suggest what I should be doing instead.
Something like this:
TextBox1.Lines = IO.File.ReadAllLines("fileName")
To remove underscores:
TextBox1.Lines = IO.File.ReadAllLines("fileName").Replace("_", String.Empty)
If you also need other special characters removed, you can use Regex.Replace:
Remove special characters from a string
Also on MSDN:
How to: Strip Invalid Characters from a String
Or the old school way - loop through all characters, and filter only those you need:
Most efficient way to remove special characters from string