I have a HTML web page at work that I want to query data from tables into excel 2007. This web page requires I sign on with a password. I sign in with my normal IE7 browser, then I go to DATA -> connections -> my connections and edit the query. This reads the IE7 cookie cache and I re-POST the data to connect to the server's security by clicking "retry" when it says "the web query returned no data". After I do this, the data imports fine.
I can do this just fine and it only needs to be done once a day. Other users of my application find this difficult which leads to my question:
Is there a way to automatically POST this data back with VB? I'm thinking maybe I should use the cookie property of the IE.Document.cookie?
I'm calling the following login script, before I continue with the web query (set reference to XML library). Look around to find some instructions how you can find your POST parameters.
Sub XMLHttpLogin()
Dim i As Integer
Dim sExpr As String
Dim sPar As String, sURL as String
Dim sResp As String
Dim XMLHttp As MSXML2.XMLHTTP60
Set XMLHttp = New MSXML2.XMLHTTP60
sPar = "name=user1&pass=pass1&form_id=form1" 'The parameters to send.
sURL = "http://www.stackoverflow.com"
With XMLHttp
.Open "POST", sURL, True 'Needs asynchronous connection
.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
.send (sPar)
i = 0 'wait until data has been downloaded
Do While i = 0
If .readyState = 4 Then
If .Status = 200 Then Exit Do
End If
DoEvents
Loop
sResp = .responseText 'contains source code of website
sExpr = "not-logged-in" 'look for this string in source code
If InStr(1, sResp, sExpr, vbTextCompare) Then
MsgBox "Not logged in. Error in XMLHttpLogin"
End If
End With
End Sub