Dom xml vba excel

XML files are one of the most common type of data files apart from text and CSV (comma-separated values) files. Reading data files which are not hierarchical (as XML files or JSON) is relatively easy. You can read in the data row by row and process columns separately. With XML (and JSON) the task is not as easy as the data is hierarchical (parent-child relationships exist between records in the schema) and the number of underlying nodes may vary as opposed to tabular data which usually has a constant number of columns separated with a specific delimiter.

Fortunately, we can use the MSXML2.DOMDocument object in VBA. Let’s however, as always, start with a short introduction as to how XML files a structure before we dive into the examples.

Loading XML document in VBA

The MSXML2.DOMDocument object allows you to easily traverse through an XML structure an extract any XML node and/or attribute needed. Let’s look at the example below.

Below we start by loading the XML document. Notice that I am selecting the load to be performed synchronously and not validation be carried out on parsing the document. Feel free to change these options if needed.

Sub TestXML()
    Dim XDoc As Object, root as Object
    
    Set XDoc = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
    XDoc.async = False: XDoc.validateOnParse = False
    XDoc.Load (ThisWorkbook.Path & "test.xml")
    Set root = XDoc.DocumentElement
    '... 
End Sub

Alternatively load an XML from a string:

Sub TestXML()
    Dim XDoc As Object, root as Object
    
    Set XDoc = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
    XDoc.async = False: XDoc.validateOnParse = False
    XDoc.LoadXML ("<root><child></child></root>")
    Set root = XDoc.DocumentElement
    '... 
End Sub

That’s it. You have loaded the XML document into memory into the DOMDocument object. The document has been parsed and you can easily traverse the enclosed elements. See next section.

XML DOM nodes in VBA

For the below I will use the following examples XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<DistributionLists>
    <List>
        <Name>Recon</Name>
        <TO>John;Bob;Rob;Chris</TO>
        <CC>Jane;Ashley</CC>
        <BCC>Brent</BCC>
    </List>
    <List>
        <Name>Safety Metrics</Name>
        <TO>Tom;Casper</TO>
        <CC>Ashley</CC>
        <BCC>John</BCC>
    </List>
    <List>
        <Name>Performance Report</Name>
        <TO>Huck;Ashley</TO>
        <CC>Tom;Andrew</CC>
        <BCC>John;Seema</BCC>
    </List>
</DistributionLists>

The XML document will provide you with the root of the entire DOM (of type XDoc.DocumentElement). Each DocumentElement (XML DOM node) facilitates the following node references:

All the above references allow you to free move within the XML DOM.

ChildNodes

Let’s start by extracting the first list and printing it’s XML and text contents. The basics to moving around the XML DOM is using ChildNodes.

Sub TestXML()
    Dim XDoc As Object
    
    Set XDoc = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
    XDoc.async = False: XDoc.validateOnParse = False
    XDoc.Load (ThisWorkbook.Path & "test.xml")
    
    'Get Document Elements
    Set lists = XDoc.DocumentElement
    
    'Get first child ( same as ChildNodes(0) )
    Set getFirstChild = lists.FirstChild
    'Print first child XML
    Debug.Print getFirstChild.XML
    'Print first child Text
    Debug.Print getFirstChild.Text

    Set XDoc = Nothing
End Sub

This is the result

'Print first child XML
<List>
    <Name>Recon</Name>
    <TO>John;Bob;Rob;Chris</TO>
    <CC>Jane;Ashley</CC>
    <BCC>Brent</BCC>
</List>
'Print first child Text
Recon John;Bob;Rob;Chris Jane;Ashley Brent

Traversing through the whole XML in VBA

Now that we got the basics let’s print out the whole contents of the XML DOM including the basenames (node names).

Sub TestXML()
    Dim XDoc As Object
    
    Set XDoc = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
    XDoc.async = False: XDoc.validateOnParse = False
    XDoc.Load (ThisWorkbook.Path & "test.xml")
    
    'Get Document Elements
    Set lists = XDoc.DocumentElement
    
    'Traverse all elements 2 branches deep
    For Each listNode In lists.ChildNodes
        Debug.Print "---Email---"
        For Each fieldNode In listNode.ChildNodes
            Debug.Print "[" & fieldNode.BaseName & "] = [" & fieldNode.Text & "]"
        Next fieldNode
    Next listNode
    
    Set XDoc = Nothing
End Sub

This is the result:

---Email---
[Name] = [Recon]
[TO] = [John;Bob;Rob;Chris]
[CC] = [Jane;Ashley]
[BCC] = [Brent]
---Email---
[Name] = [Safety Metrics]
[TO] = [Tom;Casper]
[CC] = [Ashley]
[BCC] = [John]
---Email---
[Name] = [Performance Report]
[TO] = [Huck;Ashley]
[CC] = [Tom;Andrew]
[BCC] = [John;Seema]

Easy right? Using the basics above we can easily move around the document. But this still seems like a lot of coding right? Well there is an easier way of moving / extracting items using the DOMDocument object – called XPath.

XML Document example node references

Now that we have a hang of our XML document, based on the example XML I provided above I mapped a reference to how to obtain various elements of our XML file by using node references:

• DistributionLists [FirstChild]
  • List [ChildNodes(0)]
    • Name: Recon [ChildNodes(0).ChildNodes(0).innerText]
    • TO: John;Bob;Rob;Chris [ChildNodes(0).ChildNodes(1).innerText]
    • CC: Jane;Ashley
    • BCC: Brent

  (…)

  • List [ChildNodes(1)]
    • Name: Performance Report [ChildNodes(1).ChildNodes(0).innerText]
    • TO: Huck;Ashley
    • CC: Tom;Andrew
    • BCC: John;Seema

XPath in VBA

Instead of traversing the elements/nodes in your XML using the .ChildNodes/.FirstChild/NextChild properties we can also use XPath. XPath is a query language used for selecting XML nodes in an XML document. It is represented by a single string. It allows you to extract any number of nodes (0 or more) which match the specified XPath query.

If you want to learn XPath I can recommend this overview:
https://www.w3schools.com/xml/xpath_syntax.asp

Now let’s jump into an example:

Example 1: Extract all Lists

Sub TestXML()
    Dim XDoc As Object
    
    Set XDoc = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
    XDoc.async = False: XDoc.validateOnParse = False
    XDoc.Load (ThisWorkbook.Path & "test.xml")
    
    Set lists = XDoc.SelectNodes("//DistributionLists/List")

    Set XDoc = Nothing
End Sub

Example 2: Extracting all TO fields

Set toFields = XDoc.SelectNodes("//DistributionLists/List/TO")
End Sub

Example 3: Extracting the first and last Name field

Set firstNameField = XDoc.SelectNodes("//DistributionLists/List[0]/Name")

Set lastNameField = XDoc.SelectNodes("//DistributionLists/List[2]/Name")

Example 3: Extracting all child List nodes (Name, TO, CC, BCC)

Set listChildrenField = XDoc.SelectNodes("//DistributionLists/List/*")

XML Attributes in VBA

Let’s tackle one last example – attributes. Let’s slightly modify the XML above and include an example attribute named attribute.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<DistributionLists>
    <List>
        <Name attribute="some">Recon</Name>

Using XPath (or traversing the DOM) we can easily extract the attribute as shown below.

Set firstNameField = XDoc.SelectNodes("//DistributionLists/List[0]/Name")
Debug.Print firstNameField(0).Attributes(0).Text
'Result: "some"

Creating XML documents

Creating documents is also quite straight forward in VBA.

Dim XDoc As Object, root As Object, elem As Object
Set XDoc = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
Set root = XDoc.createElement("Root")
XDoc.appendChild root
 
'Add child to root
Set elem = XDoc.createElement("Child")
root.appendChild elem
    
'Add Attribute to the child
Dim rel As Object
Set rel = XDoc.createAttribute("Attrib")
rel.NodeValue = "Attrib value"
elem.setAttributeNode rel
    
'Save the XML file
XDoc.Save "C:my_file.xml"

It is pretty easy to exchange data between Excel & VBA and XML file. XML files are one of the most common files other than Txt and CSV. It is easier to read non-hierarchical data files (XML or JSON). You can read the rows and columns differently in the code line. It is not that easy to check data with XML (and JSON.) There are parent-child relations between the records in the templates and the number of underlying nodes can be changed corresponding to the table data that contain a stable number on columns. This has been separated with a certain delimiter.

Fortunately, we can easily exchange data between Excel & VBA and XML file by using the MSXML2.DOMDocument object in VBA.
But, as always, let’s start with a short introduction concerning how to create a while before we deep into the examples of a structure in XML.

Microsoft Excel, makes it easy to import Extensible Markup Language (XML) data created on out databases and applications, pair XML objects coming from XML schema with the workbook cells and export XML data to interact with out databases and applications. You can think of it as these XML features turns Office Excel in to a XML data file creater that works with a familiar user interface.

Now let’s take a look at this VBA & XML.

Upload XML File to VBA

The MSXML2.DomDocument object enables you to access XML structure easily and provides movement between any required node and/or quality with the XML structure. Let’s take a look at the example below.

Sub PEAKUP()
 Dim Xml As Object, root As Object
 Set Xml = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
 Xml.async = False: Xml.validateOnParse = False
 Xml.Load (ThisWorkbook.Path & "etf.xml")
 Set root = Xml.DocumentElement End Sub

XML DOM Nodes in VBA

 XML file will provide you with the root of all the DOM(XDoc.DocumentElement Model).

Each DocumentElement (XML DOM node) facilitated the node references below:

All the references below help you to access the data in XML DOM.

childNodes

Let’s take the first node as an example and have the text content as MsgBox. We usually use ChildNodes while exploring nodes in XML DOM.

Sub PEAKUP()
    Dim XDoc As Object
    Set XDoc = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
    XDoc.async = False: XDoc.validateOnParse = False
    XDoc.Load (ThisWorkbook.Path & "etf.xml")
    Set lists = XDoc.DocumentElement
    Set ilkdugum = lists.FirstChild
    MsgBox ilkdugum.Xml
    MsgBox ilkdugum.Text
    Set XDoc = Nothing
End Sub

You can download this file and test the codes below.

Now that we’ve got all the basic information, we can write the all content of XML to Excel with these codes.

Sub PEAKUP()
    Dim XDoc As Object
    Set XDoc = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
    XDoc.async = False: XDoc.validateOnParse = False
    XDoc.Load (ThisWorkbook.Path & "etf.xml")
    Set lists = XDoc.DocumentElement
    For Each satirNode In lists.ChildNodes
        For Each alandNode In rowNode.ChildNodes
            a = a + 1
            Cells(a, 1) = "[" & alanNode.BaseName & "] = [" & alanNode.Text & "]"
        Next alanNode 
    Next satirNode 
    Set XDoc = Nothing
End Sub

You’ll see that you can do this action with the examples below as well.

XML Attributes in VBA

You can get the ^attribute values states as current attribute in the XML Nodes. Let’s assume that you have an XML structure like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<AnaDugum>
    <Liste>
        <Adi attribute="PEAKUP">ORG</Adi>

You can get the attributes easily with XPath as shown below.

Set adialani = XDoc.SelectNodes("//AnaDugum/Liste[0]/Adi")
MsgBox adialani(0).Attributes(0).Text

Create an XML File

ub XML_Belge_Olusturma()
    Dim XDoc As Object, root As Object, elem As Object, rel As Object
    Set XDoc = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
    Set root = XDoc.createElement("Root")
        XDoc.appendChild root
    Set elem = XDoc.createElement("Child")
        root.appendChild elem
    Set rel = XDoc.createAttribute("Oznitelik")
        rel.NodeValue = "PEAKUP"
        elem.setAttributeNode rel
    XDoc.Save ThisWorkbook.Path & "yeni.xml"
End Sub

In addition to the information above, I want to share a few code blocks that can be used to Import Data from an XML file, Search and Delete.

To list all the data in the XML file:

Sub XML_Dosyasını_Okuma()
    Dim Etf As Object, ayır() As String, i As Integer
    Set Etf = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
    Etf.async = False
    If Etf.Load(ThisWorkbook.Path & "etf.xml") Then
        ayır = Split(Etf.Text, " ")
        For i = 0 To UBound(ayır)
            Cells(i + 1, 1) = ayır(i)
        Next i
    End If
    Set Etf = Nothing: Erase ayır: i = Empty
End Sub

To list all the data in the management Node in the XML file:

DefObj I, N, R
Sub XML_Dosyasından_Veri_Alma()
    Dim i As Integer
    Set Etf = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
    Etf.async = False
    Etf.Load (ThisWorkbook.Path & "etf.xml")
    Set Nod = Etf.SelectNodes("//yonetim/*")
    For Each Item In Nod
        i = i + 1
        Cells(i, 1) = Item.Text
    Next Item
    Set Etf = Nothing: Set Nod = Nothing
    Set Item = Nothing: i = Empty
End Sub

To list the information of the person named Murat in the management Node in XML file:

DefObj I, N, R
Sub XML_Dosyasından_Veri_Alma()
    Dim i As Integer
    Set Etf = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
    Etf.async = False
    Etf.Load (ThisWorkbook.Path & "etf.xml")
    Set Nod = Etf.SelectNodes("//yonetim[ad='Murat']")
    For Each Item In Nod
        i = i + 1
        Cells(i, 1) = Item.Text
    Next Item
    Set Etf = Nothing: Set Nod = Nothing
    Set Item = Nothing: i = Empty
End Sub

To list the information of people whose City name is Istanbul in management node in XML file:

DefObj I, N, R
Sub XML_Dosyasından_Veri_Alma()
    Dim i As Integer
    Set Etf = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
    Etf.async = False
    Etf.Load (ThisWorkbook.Path & "etf.xml")
    Set Nod = Etf.SelectNodes("//yonetim[sehir='Istanbul']")
    For Each Item In Nod
        i = i + 1
        Cells(i, 1) = Item.Text
    Next Item
    Set Etf = Nothing: Set Nod = Nothing
    Set Item = Nothing: i = Empty
End Sub

To list the information of the person named Emre with the SelectsingleNode method in management node in XML file:

DefObj I, N, R
Sub XML_Dosyasından_Veri_Alma()
    Dim i As Integer
    Set Etf = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
    Etf.async = False
    Etf.Load (ThisWorkbook.Path & "etf.xml")
    Set Nod = Etf.SelectSingleNode("//yonetim[ad='Emre']")
    Range("A1").Value = Nod.Text
    Set Etf = Nothing: Set Nod = Nothing
    Set Item = Nothing: i = Empty
End Sub

To remove “Murat OSMA” in the site_management group from the list and save as new.xml  in the management node in XML file:(you can write on the old file too).

DefObj I, N, R
Sub Nod_Silme()
    Set Etf = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
    Etf.async = False
    Etf.Load (ThisWorkbook.Path & "etf.xml")
    Set Nod = Etf.SelectNodes("//yonetim[ad='Murat']")
    For Each Item In Nod
        Item.ParentNode.RemoveChild Item
    Next Item
    Etf.Save ThisWorkbook.Path & "yeni.xml"
End Sub

You can check Microsoft Docs for more details.

See you in other articles, bye. 🙋🏻‍♂️
You can share this post with your friends and get them informed as well.👍🏻

1. Importance of an XML Parser
2. Build XML Parser Using VBA
3. Conclusion

This article will teach us how to parse XML files in VBA.

Importance of an XML Parser

As a Microsoft Excel user, it is common that you might receive some data in the form of an XML file. You will have to retrieve the information from the XML file and use it in your sheets or VBA macros according to your requirement.

A way to do this is to treat it as a text file and parse the information. But this is not an elegant way to parse XML files since the information is stored well-structured using tags, and treating it as a text file negates this concept.

Therefore, we will have to make use of an XML Parser. An XML Parser reads the XML file and retrieves the relevant data so it can be used readily.

Build XML Parser Using VBA

We can parse an XML file using VBA and convert the data into our Excel sheet. The method we will be using uses the XML DOM implementation, short for the XML Document Object Model, and this model allows us to represent the XML file as an object we can then manipulate as required.

To start parsing your XML file through VBA, you must perform a simple sequence of steps. These are explained below.

To parse XML through VBA, you need to have MSXML.4.0 or greater on your system.

In the code above, we have first created a variable xDoc of the MSXML2.DOMDocument60 type. Here, we have appended 60 at the end because we are using version 6.0 of Microsoft XML, and without the 60, this code will generate a compile-time error of User-defined type not found.

Next, we have specified that we are working with the xDoc variable using the With statement. The .async property defines permission for asynchronous downloads, and the .validateOnParse property indicates if the parser should validate the XML document.

After that, we use the .Load function to load the specified XML file into the DOM variable. Here, you can change the path and file name to the one on your computer.

The next two lines are for error handling in case the XML file is not loaded properly. To test if the loading has worked, we take one node from the file and specify its name as price.

You should note that the node name is case-sensitive and must be specified according to your XML file. Finally, we display the price using the node.Text property in a message box.

Output:

This shows that the loading has worked perfectly fine.

One way to use the XML file data is to store it in an Excel sheet. Let us make a few changes to the code above to store the data in the Excel sheet:

Sub XMLParser()

Dim xDoc As New MSXML2.DOMDocument60
Set xDoc = New MSXML2.DOMDocument60
Dim list As MSXML2.IXMLDOMNodeList
Dim osh As Worksheet
Set osh = ThisWorkbook.Sheets("Sheet1")
oRow = 1

With xDoc
.async = False
.validateOnParse = True

If xDoc.Load("D:VBAexample.xml") = False Then
Debug.Print .parseError.reason, .parseError.ErrorCode
Exit Sub
End If

Set list = xDoc.SelectNodes("//price")
loopCount = 0
For Each node In list
oRow = oRow + 1
osh.Range("A" & oRow) = node.Text
Next
End With

End Sub

Here, we are retrieving all the price nodes and storing them in the sheet. In this example, we have only one price node that will be saved into the sheet as follows:

You can tweak the code according to your XML file and requirements.

Conclusion

This sums up our discussion on the method to parse XML files through VBA. In this article, we have learned how to build an XML parser using XML DOM in VBA.