html parsing of cricinfo scorecards

Question

Aim

I am looking to scrape 20/20 cricket scorecard data from the Cricinfo website, ideally into CSV form for data analysis in Excel

As an example the current Australian Big Bash 2011/12 scorecards are available from

• Game 1: http://www.espncricinfo.com/big-bash-league-2011/engine/match/524915.html
• Last Game: http://www.espncricinfo.com/big-bash-league-2011/engine/match/524935.html

Background

I am proficient in using VBA (either automating IE or using XMLHTTP and then using regular expressions) to scrape data from websites, ie Extract values from HTML TD and Tr

In that same question a comment was posted suggesting html parsing - which I hadn't come accross before - so I have taken a look at questions such as RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags

Query

While I could write a regex to parse the cricket data below I would like advice as to how I could efficiently retrieve these results with html parsing.

Please bear in mind that my preference is a repeatable CSV format containing:

• the date/name of the match
• Team 1 name
• the output should dump up to 11 records for Team 1 (blank records where players haven't batted, ie "Did Not Bat")
• Team 2 name
• the output should dump up to 11 records for Team 2 (blank records where players haven't batted)

Nirvana for me would be a solution that I could deploy using VBA or VBscript so I could fully automate my analysis, but I presume I will have to use a separate tool for the html parse.

Sample Site links and Data to be Extracted

Solution 1

There are 2 techniques that I use for "VBA". I will describe them 1 by one.

1) Using FireFox / Firebug Addon / Fiddler

2) Using Excel's inbuilt facility to get data from the web

Since this post will be read by many so I will even cover the obvious. Please feel free to skip whatever part you know

---

1) Using FireFox / Firebug Addon / Fiddler

---

FireFox : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox Free download (http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/)

Firebug Addon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebug_%28software%29 Free download (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firebug/)

Fiddler : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiddler_%28software%29 Free download (http://www.fiddler2.com/fiddler2/)

Once you have installed Firefox, install the Firebug Addon. The Firebug Addon lets you inspect the different elements in a webpage. For example if you want to know the name of a button, simply right click on it and click on "Inspect Element with Firebug" and it will give you all the details that you will need for that button.

Another example would be finding the name of a table on a website which has the data that you need scrapped.

I use Fiddler only when I am using XMLHTTP. It helps me to see the exact info being passed when you click on a button. Because of the increase in the number of BOTS which scrape the sites, most sites now, to prevent automatic scrapping, capture your mouse coordinates and pass that information and fiddler actually helps you in debugging that info that is being passed. I will not get into much details here about it as this info can be used maliciously.

Now let's take a simple example on how to scrape the URL posted in your question

http://www.espncricinfo.com/big-bash-league-2011/engine/match/524915.html

First let's find the name of the table which has that info. Simply right click on the table and click on "Inspect Element with Firebug" and it will give you the below snapshot.

So now we know that our data is stored in a table called "inningsBat1" If we can extract the contents of that table to an Excel file then we can definitely work with the data to do our analysis. Here is sample code which will dump that table in Sheet1

Before we proceed, I would recommend, closing all Excel and starting a fresh instance.

Launch VBA and insert a Userform. Place a command button and a webcrowser control. Your Userform might look like this

Paste this code in the Userform code area

Option Explicit

'~~> Set Reference to Microsoft HTML Object Library

Private Declare Sub Sleep Lib "kernel32" (ByVal dwMilliseconds As Long)

Private Sub CommandButton1_Click()
    Dim URL As String
    Dim oSheet As Worksheet

    Set oSheet = Sheets("Sheet1")

    URL = "http://www.espncricinfo.com/big-bash-league-2011/engine/match/524915.html"

    PopulateDataSheets oSheet, URL

    MsgBox "Data Scrapped. Please check " & oSheet.Name
End Sub

Public Sub PopulateDataSheets(wsk As Worksheet, URL As String)
    Dim tbl As HTMLTable
    Dim tr As HTMLTableRow
    Dim insertRow As Long, Row As Long, col As Long

    On Error GoTo whoa

    WebBrowser1.navigate URL

    WaitForWBReady

    Set tbl = WebBrowser1.Document.getElementById("inningsBat1")

    With wsk
        .Cells.Clear

        insertRow = 0
        For Row = 0 To tbl.Rows.Length - 1
            Set tr = tbl.Rows(Row)
            If Trim(tr.innerText) <> "" Then
                If tr.Cells.Length > 2 Then
                    If tr.Cells(1).innerText <> "Total" Then
                        insertRow = insertRow + 1
                        For col = 0 To tr.Cells.Length - 1
                            .Cells(insertRow, col + 1) = tr.Cells(col).innerText
                        Next
                    End If
                End If
            End If
        Next
    End With
whoa:
    Unload Me
End Sub

Private Sub Wait(ByVal nSec As Long)
    nSec = nSec + Timer
    While Timer < nSec
       DoEvents
        Sleep 100
    Wend
End Sub

Private Sub WaitForWBReady()
    Wait 1
    While WebBrowser1.ReadyState <> 4
        Wait 3
    Wend
End Sub

Now run your Userform and click on the Command button. You will notice that the data is dumped in Sheet1. See snapshot

Similarly you can scrape other info as well.

---

2) Using Excel's inbuilt facility to get data from the web

---

I believe you are using Excel 2007 so I will take that as an example to scrape the above mentioned link.

Navigate to Sheet2. Now navigate to Data Tab and click on the button "From Web" on the extreme right. See snapshot.

Enter the url in the "New Web Query Window" and click on "Go"

Once the page is uploaded, select the relevant table that you want to import by clicking on the small arrow as shown in the snapshot. Once done, click on "Import"

Excel will then ask you where you want the data to be imported. Select the relevant cell and click on OK. And you are done! The data will be imported to the cell which you specified.

If you wish you can record a macro and automate this as well :)

Here is the macro that I recorded.

Sub Macro1()
    With ActiveSheet.QueryTables.Add(Connection:= _
    "URL;http://www.espncricinfo.com/big-bash-league-2011/engine/match/524915.html" _
    , Destination:=Range("$A$1"))
        .Name = "524915"
        .FieldNames = True
        .RowNumbers = False
        .FillAdjacentFormulas = False
        .PreserveFormatting = True
        .RefreshOnFileOpen = False
        .BackgroundQuery = True
        .RefreshStyle = xlInsertDeleteCells
        .SavePassword = False
        .SaveData = True
        .AdjustColumnWidth = True
        .RefreshPeriod = 0
        .WebSelectionType = xlSpecifiedTables
        .WebFormatting = xlWebFormattingNone
        .WebTables = """inningsBat1"""
        .WebPreFormattedTextToColumns = True
        .WebConsecutiveDelimitersAsOne = True
        .WebSingleBlockTextImport = False
        .WebDisableDateRecognition = False
        .WebDisableRedirections = False
        .Refresh BackgroundQuery:=False
    End With
End Sub

---

Hope this helps. Let me know if you still have some queries.

Sid

Solution 2

For anyone else interested in this I ended up using the code below based on Siddhart Rout's earlier answer

• XMLHttp was significantly quicker than automating IE
• the code generates a CSV file for each series to be dowloaded (held in the X variable)
• the code dumps each match to a regular 29 row range (regardless of how many players batted) to facillitate easier analysis later on

    Public Sub PopulateDataSheets_XML()
    Dim URL As String
    Dim ws As Worksheet

    Dim lngRow As Long
    Dim lngRecords As Long
    Dim lngWrite As Long
    Dim lngSpare As Long
    Dim lngInnings As Long
    Dim lngRow1 As Long
    Dim X(1 To 15, 1 To 4) As String

    Dim objFSO As Object
    Dim objTF As Object

    Dim xmlHttp As Object
    Dim htmldoc As HTMLDocument
    Dim htmlbody As htmlbody
    Dim tbl As HTMLTable
    Dim tr As HTMLTableRow
    Dim strInnings As String

    s = Timer()

    Set xmlHttp = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")
    Set objFSO = CreateObject("scripting.filesystemobject")

    X(1, 1) = "http://www.espncricinfo.com/indian-premier-league-2011/engine/match/"
    X(1, 2) = 501198
    X(1, 3) = 501271
    X(1, 4) = "indian-premier-league-2011"
    X(2, 1) = "http://www.espncricinfo.com/big-bash-league-2011/engine/match/"
    X(2, 2) = 524915
    X(2, 3) = 524945
    X(2, 4) = "big-bash-league-2011"
    X(3, 1) = "http://www.espncricinfo.com/ausdomestic-2010/engine/match/"
    X(3, 2) = 461028
    X(3, 3) = 461047
    X(3, 4) = "big-bash-league-2010"

    Set htmldoc = New HTMLDocument
    Set htmlbody = htmldoc.body


    For lngRow = 1 To UBound(X, 1)
        If Len(X(lngRow, 1)) = 0 Then Exit For
        Set objTF = objFSO.createtextfile("c:\temp\" & X(lngRow, 4) & ".csv")

        For lngRecords = X(lngRow, 2) To X(lngRow, 3)
            URL = X(lngRow, 1) & lngRecords & ".html"

            xmlHttp.Open "GET", URL
            xmlHttp.send
            Do While xmlHttp.Status <> 200
                DoEvents
            Loop
            htmlbody.innerHTML = xmlHttp.responseText

            objTF.writeline X(lngRow, 1) & lngRecords & ".html"
            For lngInnings = 1 To 2
            strInnings = "Innings " & lngInnings
                objTF.writeline strInnings

                Set tbl = Nothing
                On Error Resume Next
                Set tbl = htmlbody.Document.getElementById("inningsBat" & lngInnings)
                On Error GoTo 0
                If Not tbl Is Nothing Then
                    lngWrite = 0
                    For lngRow1 = 0 To tbl.Rows.Length - 1
                        Set tr = tbl.Rows(lngRow1)
                        If Trim(tr.innerText) <> vbNewLine Then
                            If tr.Cells.Length > 2 Then
                                If tr.Cells(1).innerText <> "Extras" Then
                                    If Len(tr.Cells(1).innerText) > 0 Then
                                        objTF.writeline strInnings & "-" & lngWrite & "," & Trim(tr.Cells(1).innerText) & "," & Trim(tr.Cells(3).innerText)
                                        lngWrite = lngWrite + 1
                                    End If
                                Else
                                    objTF.writeline strInnings & "-" & lngWrite & "," & Trim(tr.Cells(1).innerText) & "," & Trim(tr.Cells(3).innerText)
                                    lngWrite = lngWrite + 1
                                    Exit For
                                End If
                            End If
                        End If
                    Next
                    For lngSpare = 12 To lngWrite Step -1
                        objTF.writeline strInnings & "-" & lngWrite + (12 - lngSpare)
                    Next
                Else
                    For lngSpare = 1 To 13
                        objTF.writeline strInnings & "-" & lngWrite + (12 - lngSpare)
                    Next
                End If
            Next
        Next
    Next
    'Call ConsolidateSheets
End Sub

Solution 3

RegEx is not a complete solution for parsing HTML because it is not guaranteed to be regular.

You should use the HtmlAgilityPack to query the HTML. This will allow you to use the CSS selectors to query the HTML similar to how you do it with jQuery.

Solution 4

As quite a few people may see this I thought I would use it as a chance to demonstrate a few features I rarely see people using in VBA web-scraping: deleteRow, querySelector and use of clipboard to write out a table (complete with formatting and hyperlinks) to a sheet based on the table.outerHTML.

deleteRow is used to remove the unwanted rows. querySelector is used to apply faster css selectors to match on nodes. Modern browsers/html parsers are optimized for css and class selectors (which I use) are the second fastest selector type (after id).

Use of css selectors and understanding htmlTable methods/properties will allow for much greater flexibility in your web-scraping endeavours. Understanding the use of the clipboard means a simple copy paste method for transferring a table to Excel.

Execution could easily be tied to a button push and the url read in from a cell.

---

VBA:

Option Explicit

Public Sub test()

    WriteOutTable "https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/8044/scorecard/524935/hobart-hurricanes-vs-melbourne-stars-big-bash-league-2011-12"
    
End Sub

Public Sub WriteOutTable(ByVal url As String)
    'required VBE (Alt+F11) > Tools > References > Microsoft HTML Object Library ;  Microsoft XML, v6 (your version may vary)

    Dim hTable As MSHTML.HTMLTable, clipboard As Object
    Dim xhr As MSXML2.xmlhttp60, html As MSHTML.htmlDocument
   
    Set xhr = New MSXML2.xmlhttp60
    Set html = New MSHTML.htmlDocument

    With xhr
        .Open "GET", url, False
        .Send
        html.body.innerHTML = .responseText
    End With

    Set hTable = html.querySelector(".batsman")
    rowCount = hTable.Rows.Length - 1
    
    For i = rowCount To 0 Step -1
        Select Case True
        Case i = rowCount Or i = rowCount - 1 Or InStr(hTable.Rows(i).outerHTML, "wicket-details") > 0
            hTable.deleteRow i
        End Select
    Next

    Set clipboard = GetObject("New:{1C3B4210-F441-11CE-B9EA-00AA006B1A69}")
    clipboard.SetText hTable.outerHTML
    clipboard.PutInClipboard
    ActiveSheet.Cells(1, 1).PasteSpecial
    
End Sub

View more solutions