Question

The code below works. But if I comment out the line Dim objRequest As MSXML2.XMLHTTP and uncomment the line Dim objRequest As Object it fails with the error message :

The parameter is incorrect

Why, and what (if anything) can I do about it?

Public Function GetSessionId(strApiId, strUserName, strPassword) As String      Dim strPostData As String      Dim objRequest As MSXML2.XMLHTTP     'Dim objRequest As Object '      strPostData = 'api_id=' & strApiId & '&user=' & strUserName & '&password=' & strPassword      Set objRequest = New MSXML2.XMLHTTP     With objRequest         .Open 'POST', 'https://api.clickatell.com/http/auth', False         .setRequestHeader 'Content-Type', 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'         .send strPostData         GetSessionId = .responseText     End With  End Function 

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Corey, yes, I know I would have to do that in order for my code to work without a reference to the MSXML type library. That’s not the issue here. The code fails when using Dim objRequest As Object regardless of whether I use

Set objRequest = NEW MSXML2.XMLHTTP with the reference, or

Set objRequest = CreateObject('MSXML2.XMLHTTP') without the reference.

Answer 1

For some reason, this works:

Dim strPostData As String Dim objRequest As Object  strPostData = 'api_id=' & strApiId & '&user=' & strUserName & '&password=' & strPassword  Set objRequest = New MSXML2.XMLHTTP With objRequest   .Open 'POST', 'https://api.clickatell.com/http/auth', False   .setRequestHeader 'Content-Type', 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'   .send (strPostData)    GetSessionId = .responseText End With 

Instead of building the URL-encoded strPostData via string concatenation, it’s strongly advisable to use a URL encoding function:

strPostData = 'api_id=' & URLEncode(strApiId) & _               '&user=' & URLEncode(strUserName) & _               '&password=' & URLEncode(strPassword) 

A couple of choices for a URLEncode() function in VBA are in this thread: How can I URL encode a string in Excel VBA?