VB Script - Sending SOAP packet explained

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

http://kapie.com/2007/10/03/consuming-soap-web-services-from-vbscript