Accessing SurveyMonkey API from VBA - excel

Question

I am tying to set-up a Excel VBA project to readout individual survey responses into a form in Excel for some calculations and then PDF reporting.
However I have great difficulty to deploy the .NET library (SurveyMonkeyApi) to be available for reference in VBA.
I have set up a VisualStudio project to test that way , and I can install it for that specific VS project (through NuGet PM). But the library is not made available for Excel on that machine.
I have downloaded (on another machine) the libraries through standalone NuGet and they download OK but then I am at loss on how to register for Excel VBA access. On top of it there is a dependency on NewtonsoftJson library too (which downloaded automatically on both occasions).
Good advice appreciated!

Answer 1

I just saw this now - is there a feature for StackOverflow to alert me when a comment is added or a question answered, so I know to look back?
Here is starting code:
Option Explicit
Public Const gACCESS_TOKEN As String = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
Declare Function GetTickCount Lib "kernel32" () As Long
Declare Sub Sleep Lib "kernel32" (ByVal lngMilliSeconds As Long)
' for a JSON parser see https://code.google.com/p/vba-json/
Public Sub test()
Dim vRequestBody As Variant, sResponse As String, sSurveyID As String
sSurveyID = "1234567890"
vRequestBody = "{""survey_id"":" & """" & sSurveyID & """" _
& ", ""fields"":[""collector_id"", ""url"", ""open"", ""type"", ""name"", ""date_created"", ""date_modified""]" _
& "}"
sResponse = SMAPIRequest("get_collector_list", vRequestBody)
End Sub
Function SMAPIRequest(sRequest As String, vRequestBody As Variant) As String
Const SM_API_URI As String = "https://api.surveymonkey.net/v2/surveys/"
Const SM_API_KEY As String = "yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy"
Dim bDone As Boolean, sMsg As String, sUrl As String, oHttp As Object ' object MSXML2.XMLHTTP
Static lsTickCount As Long
If Len(gACCESS_TOKEN) = 0 Then
Err.Raise 9999, "No Access token"
End If
On Error GoTo OnError
sUrl = SM_API_URI & URLEncode(sRequest) & "?api_key=" & SM_API_KEY
'Debug.Print Now() & " " & sUrl
Application.StatusBar = Now() & " " & sRequest & " " & Left$(vRequestBody, 127)
Set oHttp = CreateObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP") ' or "MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP"
Do While Not bDone ' 4.33 offer retry
If GetTickCount() - lsTickCount < 1000 Then ' if less than 1 sec since last call, throttle to avoid sResponse = "<h1>Developer Over Qps</h1>"
Sleep 1000 ' wait 1 second so we don't exceed limit of 2 qps (queries per second)
End If
lsTickCount = GetTickCount()
'Status Retrieves the HTTP status code of the request.
'statusText Retrieves the friendly HTTP status of the request.
'Note The timeout property has a default value of 0.
'If the time-out period expires, the responseText property will be null.
'You should set a time-out value that is slightly longer than the expected response time of the request.
'The timeout property may be set only in the time interval between a call to the open method and the first call to the send method.
RetryPost: ' need to do all these to retry, can't just retry .Send apparently
oHttp.Open "POST", sUrl, False ' False=not async
oHttp.setRequestHeader "Authorization", "bearer " & gACCESS_TOKEN
oHttp.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "application/json"
oHttp.send CVar(vRequestBody) ' request body needs brackets EVEN around Variant type
'-2146697211 The system cannot locate the resource specified. => no Internet connection
'-2147024809 The parameter is incorrect.
'String would return {"status": 3, "errmsg": "No oJson object could be decoded: line 1 column 0 (char 0)"} ??
'A Workaround would be to use parentheses oHttp.send (str)
'"GET" err -2147024891 Access is denied.
'"POST" Unspecified error = needs URLEncode body? it works with it but
SMAPIRequest = oHttp.ResponseText
'Debug.Print Now() & " " & Len(SMAPIRequest) & " bytes returned"
sMsg = Len(SMAPIRequest) & " bytes returned in " & (GetTickCount() - lsTickCount) / 1000 & " seconds: " & sRequest & " " & Left$(vRequestBody, 127)
If Len(SMAPIRequest) = 0 Then
bDone = MsgBox("No data returned - do you wish to retry?" _
& vbLf & sMsg, vbYesNo, "Retry?") = vbNo
Else
bDone = True ' got reply.
End If
Loop ' Until bdone
Set oHttp = Nothing
GoTo ExitProc
OnError: ' Pass True to ask the user what to do, False to raise to caller
Select Case MsgBox(Err.Description, vbYesNoCancel, "SMAPIRequest")
Case vbYes
Resume RetryPost
Case vbRetry
Resume RetryPost
Case vbNo, vbIgnore
Resume Next
Case vbAbort
End
Case Else
Resume ExitProc ' vbCancel
End Select
ExitProc:
End Function
Public Function URLEncode(StringVal As String, Optional SpaceAsPlus As Boolean = False) As String
Dim StringLen As Long
StringLen = Len(StringVal)
If StringLen > 0 Then
ReDim result(StringLen) As String
Dim i As Long, CharCode As Integer
Dim Char As String, Space As String
If SpaceAsPlus Then Space = "+" Else Space = "%20"
For i = 1 To StringLen
Char = Mid$(StringVal, i, 1)
CharCode = Asc(Char)
Select Case CharCode
Case 97 To 122, 65 To 90, 48 To 57, 45, 46, 95, 126
result(i) = Char
Case 32
result(i) = Space
Case 0 To 15
result(i) = "%0" & Hex(CharCode)
Case Else
result(i) = "%" & Hex(CharCode)
End Select
Next i
URLEncode = Join(result, "")
End If
End Function
EDIT 23-APRIL add more code.
the Me. comes from code in a Userform.
Set jLib = New JSONLib
vRequestBody = "{"
If Me.txtDaysCreated > "" Then
vRequestBody = vRequestBody & JKeyValue("start_date", Format$(Now() - CDbl(Me.txtDaysCreated), "yyyy-mm-dd")) & ","
End If
If Me.txtTitleContains > "" Then
' title contains "text", case insensitive
vRequestBody = vRequestBody & JKeyValue("title", Me.txtTitleContains) & ","
End If
vRequestBody = vRequestBody _
& JKeyValue("fields", Array("title", "date_created", "date_modified", "num_responses", _
"language_id", "question_count", "preview_url", "analysis_url")) & "}"
'returns in this order: 0=date_modified 1=title 2=num_responses 3=date_created 4=survey_id
' and in date_created descending
sResponse = GetSMAPIResponse("get_survey_list", vRequestBody)
------------------------------------------
Function JKeyValue(sKey As String, vValues As Variant) As String
Dim jLib As New JSONLib
JKeyValue = jLib.toString(sKey) & ":" & jLib.toString(vValues)
Set jLib = Nothing
End Function
Edit 25-April overview of VBA code to get the data
This is covered in the SM documentation, but I'll sketch how that looks in VBA.
the response to get_survey_details gives you all the survey setup data. Use
Set oJson = jLib.parse(Replace(sResponse, "\r\n", " "))
to get a json object.
Set dictSurvey = oJson("data")
gives you the dictionary so you can get data like dictSurvey("num_responses"). I take it you know how to index into dictionary objects to get field values.
Set collPages = dictSurvey("pages")
gives you a collection of Pages. The undocumented field "position" gives you the order of pages in the survey UI.
For lPage = 1 To collPages.Count
Set dictPage = collPages(lPage)
Set collPageQuestions = dictPage("questions") ' gets you the Qs on this page
For lPageQuestion = 1 To collPageQuestions.Count
Set dictQuestion = collPageQuestions(lPageQuestion) ' gets you one Q
Set collAnswers = dictQuestion("answers") ' gets the QuestionOptions for this Q
For lAnswer = 1 To collAnswers.Count
Set dictAnswer = collAnswers(lAnswer) ' gets you one Question Option
etc etc
Then given the number of responses from above, loop through the respondents 100 at a time - again see the SM doc for details of how to specify start and end dates to do incremental downloads over time.
create a json object from the response to "get_respondent_list"
Collect the fields for each respondent and accumulate a list of at most 100 respondent IDs.
Then "get_responses" for that list.
Set collResponsesData = oJson("data")
For lResponse = 1 To collResponsesData.Count
If not IsNull(collResponsesData(lResponse)) then
... get fields...
Set collQuestionsAnswered = collResponsesData(lResponse)("questions")
For lQuestion = 1 To collQuestionsAnswered.Count
Set dictQuestion = collQuestionsAnswered(lQuestion)
nQuestion_ID = CDbl(dictQuestion("question_id"))
Set collAnswers = dictQuestion("answers") ' this is a collection of dictionaries
For lAnswer = 1 To collAnswers.Count
On Error Resume Next ' only some of these may be present
nRow = 0: nRow = CDbl(collAnswers(lAnswer)("row"))
nCol = 0: nCol = CDbl(collAnswers(lAnswer)("col"))
nCol_choice = 0: nCol_choice = CDbl(collAnswers(lAnswer)("col_choice"))
sText = "": sText = collAnswers(lAnswer)("text")
nValue = 0: nValue = Val(sText)
On Error GoTo 0
and save all those values in a recordset or sheet or whatever
Hope that helps.

Answer 2

I access the SM API in straight VBA.
Just CreateObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP") then issue calls and use the SimpleJsON JSONLib to parse it.
If I wanted to access VB.Net code, I'd package it with ExcelDNA to create a XLL and that gives a straight Excel addin.

Answer 3

I would think you would need to add it into the References for your Excel project.
From the Ribbon, select, Tools, then References, then scroll through the list looking for something about SurveyMonkey API.

Answer 4

So encouraged by #sysmod I have tried to do something in VBA directly. I have left out the JSON for now as I am already in trouble. The below is giving me "Developer Inactive" as a result, though I have another project in VB.NET where the same key and token works fine.
Public Sub GetSMList()
Dim apiKey As String
Dim Token As String
Dim sm As Object
apiKey = "myKey"
Token = "myToken"
Set sm = CreateObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP.6.0")
With sm
.Open "POST", "https://api.surveymonkey.net/v2/surveys/get_survey_list", False
.setRequestHeader "Authorization", "Bearer " & Token
.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "application/json"
.send "api_key=" & apiKey
result = .responseText
End With
End Sub