Article ID: 174923 - Last Review: August 18, 2005 - Revision: 3.2

How To Use the PostData Parameter in WebBrowser Control

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This article was previously published under Q174923

SUMMARY

The WebBrowser control has a Navigate method with PostData as a parameter. This allows the user to post data to the specified URL with the WebBrowser control.

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MORE INFORMATION

Navigate specifications:

Navigates to the resource identified by a Universal Resource Locator (URL), or to the file identified by a full path.

Syntax:

   object.Navigate URL [Flags,] [TargetFrameName,] [PostData,] [Headers]

PostData Optional:

Data to send to the server during the HTTP POST transaction. For example, the POST transaction is used to send data gathered by an HTML form. If this parameter does not specify any post data, the Navigate method issues an HTTP GET transaction. This parameter is ignored if URL is not an HTTP URL.

NOTE: The post data specified by PostData is passed as a SAFEARRAY structure. The variant should be of type VT_ARRAY and point to a SAFEARRAY. The SAFEARRAY should be of element type VT_UI1, dimension one, and have an element count equal to the number of bytes of post data.

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Sample to PostData to URL server

Start Visual Basic. If Visual Basic is already running, choose New Project from the File menu (ALT, F, N). Form1 is created by default.
Add a WebBrowser control (WebBrowser1) to Form1.
Add a CommandButton (Command1) to Form1.

Add the following code to the Command1_Click event of Form1:

      Sub Command1_Click()
         Dim URL As String
         Dim Flags As Long
         Dim TargetFrame As String
         Dim PostData() As Byte
         Dim Headers As String

         URL = "http://YourServer" ' A URL that will accept a POST
         Flags = 0
         TargetFrame = ""

         PostData = "Information sent to host"

         ' VB creates a Unicode string by default so we need to
         ' convert it back to Single byte character set.
         PostData = StrConv(PostData, vbFromUnicode)

         Headers = "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" & _
            vbCrlf
         WebBrowser1.Navigate URL, Flags, TargetFrame, PostData, Headers
      End Sub