Challenge: Calling a Web Service (API) Through Excel 2010 VBA

[barnetap]

Hello all - I'm working on an research project where we want to analyze the sentiment of a large number of small blocks of text. And, yes, I'm all too familiar with the pitfalls of automated sentiment analysis. Setting that aside, I'd like to test out the effectiveness of different APIs on sample text before committing to a specific service. I'm running Excel 2010/XP. Here's the code (I've simplified for the sake of this example):

Sub SentimentTest()

    Dim XML
    Dim confirmationStatus As Boolean
    Set XML = CreateObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP")
    
    
    'Confirm Dialogue
    confirmationStatus = MsgBox("Continue?", vbYesNo, "Continue?")
    If confirmationStatus = 7 Then
        Exit Sub
    End If
    
    'Turn off Screen Updates
    Application.ScreenUpdating = False
    
               
        XML.Open "POST", "http://www.viralheat.com/api/sentiment/review.xml?text=i%20dont%20like%20this&api_key=DE0FWC1l3wzcJCDdKL", False
        'XML.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "content=text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"
        XML.send
        MsgBox XML.responseText
        

End Sub

After executing, I receive the following error on the "XML.send" line:

Run-time error '-2147467259 (80004005)':
Unspecified error

Any ideas on how to rectify?

Thank you!

 

[poolhall]

why POST? You are not sending a body with your request. You need a GET.