如何使用 VBA 将 excel 表中的信息输入到特定网站的搜索栏？

Question

I'm trying to automate a process that enters information I have stored in an excel sheet to the website seen in the code below. I'm trying to identify the search bar to run a test to see if my information will appear before I work on the search button, but I get an error in the last line of code.The way I've been attempting to identify the search bar was to inspect the element on the website. I'm pretty new with this and I've tried a few things, but I'm not sure what else I should do.

The next steps of my project would be to gather a number generated based off of the information I entered into the search bar and enter it back into the excel sheet before moving onto the next row of information and repeating the same process.

Thank you in advance!

Dim ie As New SHDocVw.InternetExplorer
Dim website As String

website = "https://cardmavin.com/category/football"
ie.navigate website
ie.Visible = True

Do While ie.readyState <> READYSTATE_COMPLETE
    
Loop

'input name
Dim idoc As MSHTML.HTMLDocument
Set idoc = ie.document

idoc.all.q.Value = "Test"

Answer 1

That element has an id, so I would use that:

idoc.getElementById("search-field").Value = "Test"

Answer 2

May I recommend not automating Internet Explorer and instead using background HTTP objects? In many cases it becomes a lot easier than trying to find buttons and search bars and waiting for IE to load etc.

Eg for your example whenever you put text in the search bar and press "search", it actuallysends those search terms to the address in the routine below. You don't need to navigate to the search page and identify the elements...

Sub Example()
Dim httpReq As Object
Set httpReq = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")
    httpReq.Open "GET", "https://mavin.io/search?q=2002+Mattel"
    httpReq.Send
MsgBox httpReq.responseText
End Sub

The URL https://mavin.io/search?q= is where the request is posted to, and the stuff after it is the search terms I'm using ("2002" and "Mattel", where a space becomes a + )

The httpReq response can be read as text, or data, or put straight into an HTML document for parsing. No Internet Explorer is created, no loading times, no graphics etc. are downloaded. It's just a plain request for the HTML document without all the trash that comes with it.