The requirements for my project were as such:
- Create a word document that will capture several fields which will be populated by another proprietary software.(Using Word 2010)
- Create a method that will take the data from the form and put it into an XML envelope to be sent via SOAP.
- Keep the document as backward compatible as possible.
- Submit the SOAP envelope to the web service and handle error or successful submission.
I see that Microsoft recommends using Web Service References Tool:
Calling XML Web Services from Office VBA Using the Web Service References Tool
Which leads to a dead link.:
Microsoft® VBA Web Service References Tool
Plus my concern with using the Web Service References Tool limits the version of Microsoft Word, and I would like to support back to at least Word 2000.
So after much research and trial and error I decided to use SOAP utilizing Microsoft XML 3.0. You could use the same code with Microsoft XML 2.0 also, but I do not have the library available on my current machine, so 3.0 will do.
For demonstration purposes, I will simplify the form for this example.
Here is the code to create your XML Doc:
Private Function fnBuildXML(ByVal blnContin As Boolean, ByVal objParams As OrderParameters) As DOMDocument
Set MyParams = New OrderParameters
Dim objDom As DOMDocument
Dim objRootElem As IXMLDOMElement
Dim objRootElem2 As IXMLDOMElement
Dim objMemberElem As IXMLDOMElement
Set objDom = New DOMDocument
With MyParams
' Creates root element
Set objRootElem = objDom.createElement("myOrderParameters")
objDom.appendChild objRootElem
'<PlaceOrder xmlns="http://webservice.com/">
Dim mystring As String
' Creates Member element
Set objMemberElem = objDom.createElement("OrderTaxSearch")
objRootElem.appendChild objMemberElem
mystring = ff("Check1").Result
objMemberElem.Text = CStr(ff("Check1").Result)
Set objMemberElem = objDom.createElement("OrderAssessmentSearch")
objRootElem.appendChild objMemberElem
objMemberElem.Text = ff("Check2").Result
Set objMemberElem = objDom.createElement("OrderUtilitiesSearch")
objRootElem.appendChild objMemberElem
objMemberElem.Text = ff("Check3").Result
End If
End With
Set fnBuildXML = objDom
Set objDom = Nothing
End Function
Now that was simplified to just give an idea how to create the XML doc for the SOAP envelope. Here is example code to communicate with the web service:
Dim envelope As String
Dim http As New MSXML2.XMLHTTP
Dim URL As String
URL = "http://WEBSERVICE.net/neworders.asmx?op=PlaceOrder"
envelope = "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>" & _
"<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance' xmlns:xsd='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema' " & _
"xmlns:soap='http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/'>" & _
"<soap:Body>" & "<PlaceOrder xmlns='http://WEBSERVICE.com/'>" & CStr(objDom.XML) & "</PlaceOrder></soap:Body></soap:Envelope>"
Call http.Open("POST", URL, False) //make sure to set async to FALSE!!!!!
http.SetRequestHeader "Content-Type", "text/xml"
envelope = Replace(envelope, "True", "true")
envelope = Replace(envelope, "False", "false")
http.Send (envelope) //Here you are sending the SOAP envelope to the webservice
MsgBox (http.responseText) //Display results from service
Set http = Nothing
End With
Set MyParams = Nothing
There ya go, please note this line:
Call http.Open("POST", URL, False)
Make sure to set varAsync to FALSE. As the default is true, word does not handle Async with web services right from what I could tell and this is defaulted to true, so your code will fail if you try to read the response, especially the longer the response. Let it wait, so set this to false, this really caused me a lot of issues until I set it to false. more about MSXML2.XMLHTTP here:
XMLHttpRequest object
Hope this helps you save some time, and if you have any questions, please let me know.
