How to parse XML using vba

Question

I work in VBA, and want to parse a string eg

Answer 1

Update

The procedure presented below gives an example of parsing XML with VBA using the XML DOM objects. Code is based on a beginners guide of the XML DOM.

Public Sub LoadDocument()
    Dim xDoc As MSXML.DOMDocument
    Set xDoc = New MSXML.DOMDocument
    xDoc.validateOnParse = False
    If xDoc.Load("C:\My Documents\sample.xml") Then
        ' The document loaded successfully.
        ' Now do something intersting.
        DisplayNode xDoc.childNodes, 0
    Else
        ' The document failed to load.
        ' See the previous listing for error information.
    End If
End Sub

Public Sub DisplayNode(ByRef Nodes As MSXML.IXMLDOMNodeList, _
   ByVal Indent As Integer)

   Dim xNode As MSXML.IXMLDOMNode
   Indent = Indent + 2

   For Each xNode In Nodes
      If xNode.nodeType = NODE_TEXT Then
         Debug.Print Space$(Indent) & xNode.parentNode.nodeName & _
            ":" & xNode.nodeValue
      End If

      If xNode.hasChildNodes Then
         DisplayNode xNode.childNodes, Indent
      End If
   Next xNode
End Sub

Nota Bene - This initial answer shows the simplest possible thing I could imagine (at the time I was working on a very specific issue) . Naturally using the XML facilities built into the VBA XML Dom would be much better. See the updates above.

Original Response

I know this is a very old post but I wanted to share my simple solution to this complicated question. Primarily I've used basic string functions to access the xml data.

This assumes you have some xml data (in the temp variable) that has been returned within a VBA function. Interestingly enough one can also see how I am linking to an xml web service to retrieve the value. The function shown in the image also takes a lookup value because this Excel VBA function can be accessed from within a cell using = FunctionName(value1, value2) to return values via the web service into a spreadsheet.

openTag = ""
closeTag = "" 

' Locate the position of the enclosing tags
startPos = InStr(1, temp, openTag)
endPos = InStr(1, temp, closeTag)
startTagPos = InStr(startPos, temp, ">") + 1
' Parse xml for returned value
Data = Mid(temp, startTagPos, endPos - startTagPos)