vba selenium - unable to access website elements after ajax loads data

Question

Theres a website I need to scrape some data from using vba selenium chrome. Website loads a table with ajax, and I can wait for the table to fully load, however, I cannot access the loaded elements. There are input fields and buttons I need to interact with, but I cannot access any of it, other than elements that loaded initially?

I used the code below just to confirm

For Each t In chrome.FindElementsByTag("input")
    debug.print t.tagName
Next

There are 2 "input" fields on the website and it only finds the first one, not the other one loaded by ajax, obviously same goes for everything else. How can I access these elements?

Difficult to know the reason for what you're seeing without a URL or relevant source HTML... — Tim Williams
– Tim Williams, Commented Mar 5 at 16:54
I understand, unfortunately I cant provide url/html as this is a private website with a lot of sensitive data — Daniel
– Daniel, Commented Mar 6 at 9:43
@Daniel so you may prepare a minimal example of the html structure without the sensitive data. What is different between these two inputs? — Shrotter
– Shrotter, Commented Mar 6 at 11:35
FindElements grabs what is available (no waits for the element like FindElement) which is why your example below likely works. You need to add a wait, for the ajax to execute, and the 2nd element to appear. — DMart
– DMart, Commented Mar 7 at 3:37
Thats not it, I dont need to add any more wait, element is loaded while Im searching for it. I have a custom function that waits for ajax to execute, also for testing I added brute force wait, and even tried with a stop then resume script manually. — Daniel
– Daniel, Commented Mar 11 at 10:08

Adel Alaa · Accepted Answer · 2025-03-05 18:55:28Z

2

Elements loaded via AJAX are not immediately available in the DOM. Try these fixes:

Explicit Wait: Use chrome.Wait to pause until elements appear.
Refresh Elements: Re-run FindElementsByTag after the table loads.
Use ExecuteScript: Inject JavaScript to fetch elements directly.

Try this:

Dim inputs As Object
Set inputs = chrome.ExecuteScript("return document.querySelectorAll('input');")
For Each t In inputs
    Debug.Print t.tagName
Next

This ensures you get all inputs, including dynamically loaded ones.

answered Mar 5 at 18:55

Adel Alaa

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2 Comments

Daniel Mar 6 at 9:37

unfortunately this didnt help - I can brute force wait until the page loads before resuming my script - all elements exist on the page, but theyre not in DOM or page source

Daniel Mar 6 at 10:25

Also i noticed that chrome.FindElementByTag("body").text actually returns all text from the page, table included, yet i cannot access these elements - what am I missing?

Daniel · Accepted Answer · 2025-03-06 11:39:04Z

0

I have found the solution, but if I'm completely honest, I'm not sure why it works. Its as simlpe as:

Set searchbar = chrome.FindElementByXPath("//input[@id='jpkm2']")

Does anyone know why this method allows me to access these elements, while looping through all elements on the page doesnt find it, and .FindElementById throws "NoSuchElementFound" instead?

answered Mar 6 at 11:39

Daniel

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