How to Check if a Node Path Exits in VBA XML

Programmers can edit standard Microsoft Office documents using VBA and XML.

Extensible Markup Language (XML) allows programmers to save data for later use. You can use Visual BASIC for Applications (VBA) to programmatically manipulate many different data types, including XML data. Documents saved in XML format contain nodes, which are sets of matching tags that enclose a particular body of information. Programmers must transverse a node path within XML documents if they wish to obtain the data contained within a particular node. You might use VBA to check to see if a node path exits when you perform data transfer operations.

Instructions

1. Open the document that contains the XML file you wish to evaluate, and create a code behind file or text document as appropriate for the target XML file. Open the "Developer" tab and click on the VBA icon, if you're using Microsoft Office.

2. Create a reference variable of type bool:

   Dim doesNodePathExist As Bool

3. Open the XML document:

   Set xmlDom = New MSXML2.DOMDocument

4. Traverse the node path within an If statement:

   Dim doesNodePathExist As Bool

   If xmlDom 'Node path goes here

5. Set the Bool variable to "true" if VBA tranversed the node path successfully. But allow it to retain the default value of "false" if it exited without finding a value:

   Dim doesNodePathExist As Bool

   If xmlDom ('Node path goes here) Then

   doesNodePathExist = true

6. Use the value in code as needed. If necessary, trigger a new search for a different XML node.

7. Save your work and test it to ensure it works as expected.

References

• W3C: Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.1 (Second Edition)
• Microsoft: Getting Started with VBA in Office 2010
• Microsoft: Using Visual Basic .NET from VBA to Serialize Word Documents as XML
• Microsoft: Putting XML to Work