Consuming SOAP Web Services from VBScript

I spent a day this past week visiting one of our Technology Partners in New Jersey. The objective was do put together a proof concept for some integration we are planning.

We have some very cool stuff, about to be announced at one of the big shows coming up and the integration is around this new stuff. Anyway one of the things we had to do was to connect to a Web Service that returned complex types from a dynamic language.

I chose VBScript as the language because it’s widely available and can be executed on virtually any windows machine. I also wanted to ensure we only used commonly available (installed) ActiveX objects. The other constraint was the Web Services only used SOAP and HTTP POSTs, no HTTP GET support.

So the work involved was to :

  1. Create an XMLHTTP object
  2. Create the SOAP Body
  3. Send it to the Web Service
  4. Parse the results

Below is how we went about it.
It is messy and pretty horrible text manipulation to generate the SOAP bodies etc, but it is the only way I found from scripting..

Let me know if you have better / easier methods…

Const URL = “http://www.domain.com/folder/service.asmx” Const nsUrl = “http://www.domain.com/namespace-name”

’ Create the http request text Dim strSoapReq strSoapReq = GenerateSoapBodyStart() strSoapReq = strSoapReq + GenerateSoapFunctionCallStart(“WebServiceFunctionName”) strSoapReq = strSoapReq + GenerateSoapParameter(“paramName1”, paramValue1) strSoapReq = strSoapReq + GenerateSoapParameter(“paramName2”, paramValue2) strSoapReq = strSoapReq + GenerateSoapFunctionCallEnd(“WebServiceFunctionName”) strSoapReq = strSoapReq + GenerateSoapBodyEnd()

Dim oHttp Dim strResult Set oHttp = CreateObject(“Msxml2.XMLHTTP”) oHttp.open “POST”, URL, false oHttp.setRequestHeader “Content-Type”, “text/xml” oHttp.setRequestHeader “SOAPAction”, URL + “WebServiceFunctionName” oHttp.send strSoapReq strResult = oHttp.responseText

’ parse XML in strResult

Function GetResult(byval responseText, byval resultParam)

Dim oXml
Set oXml = CreateObject("Msxml2.DOMDocument")
oXml.Async = true
oXml.LoadXml responseText

Dim strPath
strPath = "/\*/\*/\*/" + resultParam
Dim oNode
Set oNode = oXml.documentElement.SelectSingleNode(strPath)
GetResult = oNode.Text

End Function

Function GenerateSoapBodyStart()

Dim strSoap
strSoap = "<?xml version=""1.0"" encoding=""utf-8""?>"
strSoap = strSoap + "<soap12:Envelope "
strSoap = strSoap + "xmlns:xsi=""http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"" "
strSoap = strSoap + "xmlns:xsd=""http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"" "
strSoap = strSoap + "xmlns:soap12=""http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope""> "
strSoap = strSoap + "<soap12:Body>"
GenerateSoapBodyStart = strSoap

End Function

Function GenerateSoapBodyEnd()

Dim strSoap
strSoap = "</soap12:Body>"
strSoap = strSoap + "</soap12:Envelope>"
GenerateSoapBodyEnd = strSoap

End Function

Function GenerateSoapFunctionCallStart(byval strFunction)

Dim strSoap
strSoap = "<" + strFunction + " xmlns=""" + nsUrl + """>"
GenerateSoapFunctionCallStart = strSoap

End Function

Function GenerateSoapFunctionCallEnd(byval strFunction)

Dim strSoap
strSoap = "</" + strFunction + ">"
GenerateSoapFunctionCallEnd = strSoap

End Function

Function GenerateSoapParameter(byval strParam, byval strValue)

Dim strSoap
strSoap = "<" + strParam + ">"
strSoap = strSoap + strValue
strSoap = strSoap + "</" + strParam + ">"
GenerateSoapParameter = strSoap

End Function

WS-Sample.vbs (2.42 KB)

Fair Lawn, NJ – 40.9381556054652:-74.132137298584


scripting web

Archive