VB6-Web

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.

Getting started

For more details see the Wiki

XML Support

XML support is still possible on Windows, follow these instructions to use a custom formatter.

Notes

• 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 = True will automatically load proxy settings
• Support for custom request and response formats. See RegisterConverter

Examples

The following examples demonstrate using the Google Maps API to get directions between two locations.

GetJSON Example

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 Sub

There are 3 primary components in VB6-Web:

1. WebRequest for defining complex requests
2. WebClient for executing requests
3. WebResponse for 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.

WebRequest Example

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 Sub

The 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

Authentication Example

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 Function

For more details, check out the Wiki, Docs, and Examples

Release Notes

View the changelog for release notes

About

• Original Author: Tim Hall
• Ported to VB6 by: Scott Reeves (Bluejacket Software)
• License: MIT