Extract the URL and display text of a HTML hyperlink tag in a simple string variable

[AOB]

I'm trying to extract the URL and display text of a HTML hyperlink tag in the form of a simple string variable.

So the string variable will hold a value along the lines of :

<a href="https://www.somewebsite.com">Visit Some Website</a>

And I want to pull out the URL ("https://www.somewebsite.com") and the display text ("Visit Some Website") into two separate string variables somehow.

Bearing in mind, I don't have control over the source HTML tag that fills the original string variable (i.e. there may be whitespace/s between the <a tag and the href etc. - so I need something consistent & reliable to account for that)

Pretty sure a couple of regex's are the answer here but struggling to come up with the pattern(s) if anybody might have any pointers?

Thanks!

 

[Scott Huish]

Maybe:

Sub test()
Dim h As String, strLink As String, strText As String
h = "<a href=""https://www.somewebsite.com"">Visit Some Website</a>"
strLink = Split(h, """")(1)
strText = Replace(Split(h, ">")(1), "</a", "")

MsgBox strLink & ", " & strText

End Sub

 

[AOB]

Thanks @Scott Huish - yeah I was thinking along those same lines but was worried that I couldn't necessarily guarantee the link would be wrapped in double-quotes (it could be single quote / apostrophe) and also possible there could be other single/double-quotes within the tag that could potentially mess me up.

I've actually just copped that you can get submatches from the original regex that I was using to extract the full tags from the full HTML I'm trying to parse so that's actually ended up the easiest / most accurate way of splitting out the links and display texts.

This is that regex :

Set objRegexHTMLHyperlinks = CreateObject("VBScript.RegExp")
With objRegexHTMLHyperlinks
    .MultiLine = False
    .Global = True
    .IgnoreCase = True
    .Pattern = "<a\s+(?:[^>]*?\s+)?href=(["" '])(.*?)(["" '])>(.*?)</a>"
End With

And then when I execute that against the full text into a match collection, I get submatches for each match with each grouping :

1. Group 1 is the single/double-quote directly following the href
2. Group 2 is the text directly following the single/double-quote (i.e. the URL)
3. Group 3 is the single/double-quote directly following the URL (closing the string)
4. Group 4 is the text between the > and the </a> (i.e. the display text)

So it looks like I have this working now, although I have to stress test that pattern now against various possibilities that might arise, although at first glance it seems pretty good?