A really great thread has been evolving in the slxdeveloper.com forums about consuming web services from SalesLogix VBScript plugins. Take a look:

Some highlights of the thread include Jason Huber’s post showing an example using the MS SOAP SDK (^):

I created a little WS at http://www.huberstyle.com/slxws/calc.asmx?wsdl using .net although this isnt important.
I ensured I could view my WSDL by using the above link. My WSDL shows you that I have one function called ADD that accepts two ints and returns an int.

I also needed to install the Soap Toolkit on the client machine:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C943C0DD-CEEC-4088-9753-86F052EC8450&displaylang=en

Dim soapClient3, strResult
Set soapClient3 = CreateObject(“MSSOAP.SoapClient30”)
Call soapClient3.mssoapinit(“http://www.huberstyle.com/slxws/calc.asmx?wsdl”)
strResult = soapClient3.Add(3,4)
msgbox(strResult)

Timmus posted an example demonstrating calling the web service using XMLHTTP, passing some parameters to the web service, and parsing the XML results (^):

This web service accepts four parameters:

    [GetUser xmlns="http://tempuri.org/"]
      [FirstName]string[/FirstName]
      [LastName]string[/LastName]
      [ReportsToFirstName]string[/ReportsToFirstName]
      [ReportsToLastName]string[/ReportsToLastName]
    [/GetUser]

It then returns a user object that has 3 properties: FirstName (string), LastName (string), ReportsTo(user). This will give us the ability to see how nesting objects will be returned and parsed in the dom.

Here is the code calling the web service:

option explicit
dim oXMLDoc
dim oXMLHTTP

Sub Button1Click(Sender)
  set oXMLDoc = CreateObject("Msxml2.DOMDocument")
  set oXMLHTTP = CreateObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP.3.0")

  oXMLHTTP.onreadystatechange = getRef("HandleStateChange")
  call oXMLHTTP.open("POST", "http://localhost:3163/GetCurrentTime/Service.asmx/GetUser", false)
  call oXMLHTTP.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded")
  call oXMLHTTP.send("FirstName=Bill&LastName=Clinton&ReportsToFirstName=Hillary&ReportsToLastName=Clinton")


end sub

sub HandleStateChange
  dim sFirstName
  dim sLastName
  dim sReportsToFN
  dim sReportsToLN

  if (oXMLHTTP.readyState = 4) then
    dim szResponse: szResponse = oXMLHTTP.responseText

    call oXMLDoc.loadXML(szResponse)
    if (oXMLDoc.parseError.errorCode <> 0) then
      call msgbox (oXMLDoc.parseError.reason)
    else
      sFirstName   = oXMLDoc.getElementsByTagName("User")(0).childNodes(0).text
      sLastName    = oXMLDoc.getElementsByTagName("User")(0).childNodes(1).text
      sReportsToFN = oXMLDoc.getElementsByTagName("User")(0).childNodes(2).childNodes(0).text
      sReportsToLN = oXMLDoc.getElementsByTagName("User")(0).childNodes(2).childNodes(1).text

      call msgbox(sFirstName & " " & sLastName & " reports to " & sReportsToFN & " " & sReportsToLN)

    end if
  end if
End Sub

As you can see the XMLDom is quite simple to traverse although I find it critical to have a good debugger so you can visually traverse the DOM. Once you can see it, you can code it

What an awesome discussion, and great stuff for any SalesLogix developer to follow! Thanks everyone!