web services - Is There a JSON Parser for VB6 / VBA?

Question

I am trying to consume a web service in VB6. The service - which I control - currently can return a SOAP/XML message or JSON. I am having a really difficult time figuring out if VB6's SOAP type (version 1) can handle a returned object - as opposed to simple types like string, int, etc. So far I cannot figure out what I need to do to get VB6 to play with returned objects.

So I thought I might serialize the response in the web service as a JSON string. Does a JSON parser exist for VB6?

Answer 1

Check out JSON.org for an up-to-date list (see bottom of main page) of JSON parsers in many different languages. As of the time of this writing, you'll see a link to several different JSON parsers there, but only one is for VB6/VBA (the others are .NET):

• VB-JSON

  • When I tried to download the zip file, Windows said the data was corrupt. However, I was able to use 7-zip to pull the files out. It turns out that the main "folder" in the zip file isn't recognized as a folder by Windows, by 7-zip can see the contents of that main "folder," so you can open that up and then extract the files accordingly.

  • The actual syntax for this VB JSON library is really simple:

    Dim p As Object
    Set p = JSON.parse(strFormattedJSON)
    
    'Print the text of a nested property '
    Debug.Print p.Item("AddressClassification").Item("Description")
    
    'Print the text of a property within an array '
    Debug.Print p.Item("Candidates")(4).Item("ZipCode")
    

  • Note: I had to add the "Microsoft Scripting Runtime" and "Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects 2.8" library as references via Tools > References in the VBA editor.
  • Note: VBJSON code is actually based on a google code project vba-json. However, VBJSON promises several bug fixes from the original version.