Consuming a .Net SOAP Webservice from Classic ASP (VBScript)
On November 27th, 2008 by Duane Jackson
This is probably the most technical post I’ve made to date – so unless the title makes sense to you, the rest of this is likely to be a foreign laguage too.
We had a meeting today with some great guys with an even greater service that we’re going to be integrating with our online accounting software (more on that another time). Their service is exposed as a .Net SOAP webservice. Now you’d think that wouldn’t be a problem for us as our own accounting API uses the same technology. Well, you’d be wrong. Our core product is still coded in classic ASP / VBScript.
So the challenge was to talk to a SOAP webservice from VBScript. Google threw up a few results, none of them exactly what I needed. The closest was a blog post by Ken Hughes. So I took his approach and re-wrote it for my needs. It’s not the prettiest piece of code I’ve ever written, and would certainly be nicer as a class. But it does the job.
Enough talk, here are the goods. First an include file with all the functions, etc:
Download: _consumewebservice.asp
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 | <% SOAP_ENDPOINT = "" SOAP_NS = "" SOAP_FUNCTION = "" SOAP_REQUEST = "" SOAP_RESPONSE = "" function SOAP_StartRequest(sEndPoint, sNameSpace, sFunction) SOAP_ENDPOINT = sEndPoint SOAP_NS = sNameSpace SOAP_FUNCTION = sFunction 'do the SOAP envelope SOAP_REQUEST = "<?xml version=""1.0"" encoding=""utf-8""?>" SOAP_REQUEST = SOAP_REQUEST + "<soap12:Envelope " SOAP_REQUEST = SOAP_REQUEST + "xmlns:xsi=""http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"" " SOAP_REQUEST = SOAP_REQUEST + "xmlns:xsd=""http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"" " SOAP_REQUEST = SOAP_REQUEST + "xmlns:soap12=""http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope""> " 'start the SOAP body SOAP_REQUEST = SOAP_REQUEST + "<soap12:Body>" 'start function SOAP_REQUEST = SOAP_REQUEST + "<" + SOAP_FUNCTION + " xmlns=""" + SOAP_NS + """>" end function Function SOAP_AddParameter(byval strParam, byval strValue) Dim strSoap SOAP_REQUEST = SOAP_REQUEST + "<" + strParam + ">" SOAP_REQUEST = SOAP_REQUEST + strValue SOAP_REQUEST = SOAP_REQUEST + "</" + strParam + ">" End Function function SOAP_SendRequest() 'end function, body and envelope SOAP_REQUEST = SOAP_REQUEST + "</" + SOAP_FUNCTION + ">" SOAP_REQUEST = SOAP_REQUEST + "</soap12:Body>" SOAP_REQUEST = SOAP_REQUEST + "</soap12:Envelope>" Dim oHttp Dim strResult Set oHttp = CreateObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP") oHttp.open "POST", SOAP_ENDPOINT, false oHttp.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "text/xml" oHttp.setRequestHeader "SOAPAction", SOAP_NS + "/" & SOAP_FUNCTION oHttp.send SOAP_REQUEST SOAP_RESPONSE = oHttp.responseText end function Function SOAP_GetResult(resultParam) Dim oXml Set oXml = CreateObject("Msxml2.DOMDocument") oXml.Async = true oXml.LoadXml SOAP_RESPONSE Dim strPath strPath = "/*/*//" + resultParam Dim oNode Set oNode = oXml.documentElement.SelectSingleNode(strPath) SOAP_GetResult = oNode.Text End Function %> |
And now a quick demo. This connects to our accounting API, calls the GetInvoice function and gives you a couple of the return values.
Download: tryit.asp
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 | <!--#include virtual="_consumeWebservice.asp"--> <% SOAP_StartRequest "https://secure.kashflow.co.uk/api/service.asmx", "KashFlow", "GetInvoice" SOAP_AddParameter "UserName", "yourusername" SOAP_AddParameter "Password", "yourpassword" SOAP_AddParameter "InvoiceNumber", "37" SOAP_SendRequest %> <html> <head> </head> <body> Status: <%=SOAP_GetResult("Status")%><br /> NetAmount: <%=SOAP_GetResult("NetAmount")%><br /> VATAmount: <%=SOAP_GetResult("VATAmount")%><br /> </body> </html> |
There are some limitations – it doesn’t handle complex types in the request. But it does what I need it to do and hopefully it’ll be of use to someone else out there.
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Tags: Programming, SOAP, VBScript
December 9th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
This post just made my day. Thank you for posting your code for all. It works like a charm, and the code is very logical and easy to understand.
June 8th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
This is probably the most useful SOAP to classic ASP information I’ve found in the last week. Everything I’ve found has been broken and this is likely going to save me hours of more searching. Bravo to you and thanks for posting this up.
March 12th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
SOAP to classic ASP.
I havent found any other info that worked, and is easy to understand. You have made my day.
Your my hero of the week.