I have access to an API. The API takes an XML post as input and then returns an XML response with the relevant data.
I want to
- Send the HTTP Post to the Server (Authentication and Request will be sent together)
- Receive the response (One of the options to be returned is CSV or XML)
- Insert the data into the appropriate rows and columns and then perform data analysis using pivot tables.
I don't have a programming background in excel but am comfortable with different web scripting languages, HTML, CSS, Javascript etc.
Any ideas?
If you need to send your input xml as the message body here is how you can do it.
You may need to add more or change the Request headers to get it to work for you.
Using the DOMDocument object make it easy to work with your xml documents.
Add a project references to;
- Microsoft WinHTTP Services, version 5.1
- Microsoft XML, v6.0
Example:
Dim xmlInput As String
xmlInput = "<YourXmlRequest></YourXmlPayload>"
Dim oXmlHttp As MSXML2.XMLHTTP60
Set oXmlHttp = New MSXML2.XMLHTTP60
oXmlHttp.Open "POST", serviceURL, False, "UserName", "Password"
oXmlHttp.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
oXmlHttp.setRequestHeader "Connection", "Keep-Alive"
oXmlHttp.setRequestHeader "Accept-Language", "en"
oXmlHttp.send xmlInput
Debug.Print oXmlHttp.responseText
Dim oXmlReturn As MSXML2.DOMDocument60
Set oXmlReturn = New MSXML2.DOMDocument60
oXmlReturn.loadXML oXmlHttp.responseText
The Excel request side can be handled with this VBA code.
Sub GetStuff()
Dim objXML As Object
Dim strData As String
Dim strResponse As String
strData = "Request"
Set objXML = CreateObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP")
objXML.Open "POST", "www.example.com/api?" & strData, False
objXML.Send
strResponse = objXML.responsetext
MsgBox strResponse
End Sub
This is what I ended up using:
Set objHTTP = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")
objHTTP.Open "POST", urlPath, False
objHTTP.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "text/xml"
objHTTP.send (request)
I suggest to use WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5.1
instead of MSXML2.XMLHTTP
whenever you need windows authentication, because it allows you to use current user credential to login. Here is an example
Dim http As Object
Set http = CreateObject("WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5.1")
http.SetAutoLogonPolicy 0
http.Open "POST", "http://myUrl.html?param1=value1", False
http.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "text/json"
http.setRequestHeader "User-Agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/7B405"
http.send ("")
Reference: https://github.com/VBA-tools/VBA-Web/issues/15