VB6-Web (formerly Excel-REST) makes working with complex webservices and APIs easy with VBA on Windows and Mac. It includes support for authentication, automatically converting and parsing JSON, working with cookies and headers, and much more.
For more details see the Wiki
XML support is still possible on Windows, follow these instructions to use a custom formatter.
- Authentication support is built-in, with suppory for HTTP Basic, OAuth 1.0, OAuth 2.0, Windows, Digest, Google, and more. See Authentication for more information
- For proxy environments,
Client.EnabledAutoProxy = Truewill automatically load proxy settings - Support for custom request and response formats. See RegisterConverter
The following examples demonstrate using the Google Maps API to get directions between two locations.
Function GetDirections(Origin As String, Destination As String) As String ' Create a WebClient for executing requests ' and set a base url that all requests will be appended to Dim MapsClient As New WebClient MapsClient.BaseUrl = "https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/" ' Use GetJSON helper to execute simple request and work with response Dim Resource As String Dim Response As WebResponse Resource = "directions/json?" & _ "origin=" & Origin & _ "&destination=" & Destination & _ "&sensor=false" Set Response = MapsClient.GetJSON(Resource) ' => GET https://maps.../api/directions/json?origin=...&destination=...&sensor=false ProcessDirections Response End Function Public Sub ProcessDirections(Response As WebResponse) If Response.StatusCode = WebStatusCode.Ok Then Dim Route As Dictionary Set Route = Response.Data("routes")(1)("legs")(1) Debug.Print "It will take " & Route("duration")("text") & _ " to travel " & Route("distance")("text") & _ " from " & Route("start_address") & _ " to " & Route("end_address") Else Debug.Print "Error: " & Response.Content End If End SubThere are 3 primary components in VB6-Web:
WebRequestfor defining complex requestsWebClientfor executing requestsWebResponsefor dealing with responses.
In the above example, the request is fairly simple, so we can skip creating a WebRequest and instead use the Client.GetJSON helper to GET json from a specific url. In processing the response, we can look at the StatusCode to make sure the request succeeded and then use the parsed json in the Data parameter to extract complex information from the response.
If you wish to have more control over the request, the following example uses WebRequest to define a complex request.
Function GetDirections(Origin As String, Destination As String) As String Dim MapsClient As New WebClient MapsClient.BaseUrl = "https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/" ' Create a WebRequest for getting directions Dim DirectionsRequest As New WebRequest DirectionsRequest.Resource = "directions/{format}" DirectionsRequest.Method = WebMethod.HttpGet ' Set the request format ' -> Sets content-type and accept headers and parses the response DirectionsRequest.Format = WebFormat.Json ' Replace {format} segment DirectionsRequest.AddUrlSegment "format", "json" ' Add querystring to the request DirectionsRequest.AddQuerystringParam "origin", Origin DirectionsRequest.AddQuerystringParam "destination", Destination DirectionsRequest.AddQuerystringParam "sensor", "false" ' => GET https://maps.../api/directions/json?origin=...&destination=...&sensor=false ' Execute the request and work with the response Dim Response As WebResponse Set Response = MapsClient.Execute(DirectionsRequest) ProcessDirections Response End Function Public Sub ProcessDirections(Response As WebResponse) ' ... Same as previous example End SubThe above example demonstrates some of the powerful feature available with WebRequest. Some of the features include:
- Url segments (Replace {segment} in resource with value)
- Method (GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE)
- Format (json, xml, url-encoded, plain-text) for content-type and accept headers and converting/parsing request and response
- QuerystringParams
- Body
- Cookies
- Headers
For more details, see the WebRequest portion of the Docs
The following example demonstrates using an authenticator with VB6-Web to query Twitter. The TwitterAuthenticator (found in the authenticators/ folder) uses Twitter's OAuth 1.0a authentication and details of how it was created can be found in the Wiki.
Function QueryTwitter(Query As String) As WebResponse Dim TwitterClient As New WebClient TwitterClient.BaseUrl = "https://api.twitter.com/1.1/" ' Setup authenticator Dim TwitterAuth As New TwitterAuthenticator TwitterAuth.Setup _ ConsumerKey:="Your consumer key", _ ConsumerSecret:="Your consumer secret" Set TwitterClient.Authenticator = TwitterAuth ' Setup query request Dim Request As New WebRequest Request.Resource = "search/tweets.json" Request.Format = WebFormat.Json Request.Method = WebMethod.HttpGet Request.AddQuerystringParam "q", Query Request.AddQuerystringParam "lang", "en" Request.AddQuerystringParam "count", 20 ' => GET https://api.twitter.com/1.1/search/tweets.json?q=...&lang=en&count=20 ' Authorization Bearer Token... (received and added automatically via TwitterAuthenticator) Set QueryTwitter = TwitterClient.Execute(Request) End FunctionFor more details, check out the Wiki, Docs, and Examples
View the changelog for release notes
- Original Author: Tim Hall
- Ported to VB6 by: Scott Reeves (Bluejacket Software)
- License: MIT