Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Hi all,

How do you access the internet with LibreOffice/OpenOffice Basic, what are the tools?
To be more precise: is it possible to fill a Calc file with data from a web page in JSON, XML, and why not HTLM format?

Thanks.

BASIC as a language is not aware of anything like the internet and will provide nothing. You may load files, if the OS or LibreOffice helps: You can use file:-URLs, but to parse any modern stuff like xml, json etc you are on your own or need a library.

Obviously there is library-code available for xml and html in UNO, because LO uses XML itself and can import html.

But actually I would start searching here, as there is a Calc-service, wich can import data to a Calc-grid and it may be easier to use the existing options:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Doc ... WEBSERVICE

Hi Mountainner,

Thank you for the WEBSERVICE link I did not know and it gives a starting point.

In fact for my extensions I use the Python Request API, one of the easiest HTTP request APIs to use.
As I use it from different extensions, I finally managed to port the Request API to UNO and should therefore also be accessible to BASIC.

This port of the Request API provides two new interfaces under UNO:

• com.sun.star.rest.XRequestParameter: which are the parameters that will be used when executing the HTTP request.

• com.sun.star.rest.XRequestResponse: which the result of the execution of the HTTP request

These two new interfaces try to mimic as closely as possible that of the Request API, especially for XRequestResponse which allows:

• To know the status of the HTTP request.

• To access the content of the request as a binary stream XEnumeration.

• To manage the tokens of the following pages found in the JSON or XLM APIs of google Drive API or Microsoft graph, allowing the execution of requests in a loop.

The use is very simple:

• Install the OAuth2OOo extension

• Create the UNO service:

  Code: Select all

  session = CreateUnoService("io.github.prrvchr.OAuth2OOo.OAuth2Service")

• If you want to use OAuth2 initialize session (optionnal):

  Code: Select all

  session.initializeSession(url, emailaddress)

• Get a Request Parameter:

  Code: Select all

  parameter = session.getRequestParameter("aname")

• Set a least an URL and the NoAuth properties (the default HTTP request method is GET):

  Code: Select all

  parameter.Url = "https://...."

  Code: Select all

  parameter.NoAuth = true

• Get the HTTP response from parameter:

  Code: Select all

  response = session.execute(parameter)

• do what you have to do with your response then:

  Code: Select all

  response.close()

With this new UNO API, I think it will be quite easy for the OAuth2Service service to offer a method: (with contenttype as a ContentType) allowing to suck web pages in Calc.

I have to create a dialog box to set the properties of XRequestParameter, that's not too complicated.
The Calc part is accessing the correct cell and injecting the data. For this part I cruelly lack skills.