Retrieving XML data

Question

I am using the following function to receive XML data from a URL.

Is there a more efficient method for retrieving this XML data?

Public Function UserLocation() As String

    Try

        Dim XML As Object = Server.CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.6.0")
        Dim getXML As String = "<URL>"
        XML.async = "false"
        XML.resolveExternals = "false"
        XML.setProperty("ServerHTTPRequest", True)
        XML.Load(getXML)

        Return XML.documentElement.SelectSingleNode("name").Text

    Catch e As Exception

        Return False

    End Try

End Function

Answer 1

I am giving code feedback based on c# however I think you can apply that to vb.

You can leverage the HttpWebRequest class to extract the xml response.

public static XmlDocument MakeRequest(string requestUrl)
{
    try
    {
        HttpWebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(requestUrl) as HttpWebRequest;
        HttpWebResponse response = request.GetResponse() as HttpWebResponse;    
        XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
        xmlDoc.Load(response.GetResponseStream());
        return (xmlDoc);    
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(e.Message);    
        Console.Read();
        return null;
    }
}

Then you can invoke the function with requested url which has xml response.

XmlDocument locationsResponse = MakeRequest(locationsRequest);
ProcessResponse(locationsResponse);

Now in the ProcessResponse function you can extract the value from XmlDocument using either XPath query or linq to xml.

 static public void ProcessResponse(XmlDocument doc)
 {
       // Here you query the doc..           
 }