VBA Accessing GZIP JSON Response - Characters are garbled

[manofcheese]

I am trying to access an api from a site called keepa.com. I create a Msxml2.ServerXMLHTTP object and am able to get a response but the text is just a jumbled mess. For example the some of the response looks like this :

?x^??^H?\KIv3K ,+)?j2?%b6??;????u?iL\i??4???k}?:?I???]??????k??????1?????%}?WC????u??=S???Ï?????/f*??Zn=?+h?????i?r?^?L`????kJ??`lim&2?MF??V

I have tried to use MSXML2.XMLHTTP instead but I get an error saying that access is denied.

Below is my current code.

Function getProductObject(apiKey As String, asins As String) As Object
    
    Dim url As String
    url = "http://api.keepa.com/product?key=" & apiKey & "&domain=1&asin=B06XRT2B3P,B06XKLHSWJ&history=1&stats=1"
    
    Dim hReq As Object
    Set hReq = CreateObject("Msxml2.ServerXMLHTTP")


    With hReq
        .Open "GET", url, False
        .Send
    End With
    
    Debug.Print hReq.ResponseText
        
    Dim response As String
    response = "{""data"":" & hReq.ResponseText & "}"
    
    Set getProductObject = JsonConverter.ParseJson(response)


End Function

Does anyone know what I need to do to get the response back in readable text?

 

[mole999]

are you looking at a zip file, they will be highly compressed so would need a decompressor to see the stored items

 

[manofcheese]

I've never worked with compressing and decompressing files before. I've tried to change the request header to request the file as decompressed but it didn't seem to work. Do you have any suggestions on a decompressor to use and how to use it?

 

[John_w]

You could try adding one of these lines between the Open and Send:

.setRequestHeader "Accept-Encoding", "gzip, deflate"
.setRequestHeader "Accept-Encoding", "identity, deflate"

However, https://keepa.com/#!discuss/t/having-troubles-with-api-response/5638 says that all API responses are GZIP compressed, so the server may ignore that header.

 

[manofcheese]

Thanks John. I just tested both of those and it looks like they do ignore this header line. Do you have any ideas on other ways of decompressing? My Googling abilities are failing me on this.

 

[Kyle123]

Just use msxml2.xmlhttp instead of msxml2.serverxmlhttp. Or is there a reason you’re using the server version?

 

[manofcheese]

Hey Kyle,

When I try to use the non server version I get a runtime error that says "Access is denied"

 

[Kyle123]

Your url is wrong, it’s https, not http

 

[manofcheese]

You freakin' rock. I thought I had already checked that but I guess I missed it. Now it comes in just fine. Thank you so much!

 

[Kyle123]

No problem, glad you got it sorted