Access a site from a web app

Targets Web
1

I need to be able to retrieve data from a website from a Xojo web app. It’s an XML file. The goal is to have it downloaded to the user’s computer. WebHTMLViewer has a loadURL method, but I don’t need to show the site.

Is this possible?

2

look at xojo examples using urlconnection

3

Here is what I use to get a web file as a FolderItem or as a String:

Protected Function getURLConnectionFolderItem(URLConnectionHost As String, f As FolderItem, URLConnectionTimeOut As Integer = 10) As FolderItem
  Var tempURLConnection As New URLConnection
  Var MIMEType As String = "application/json"
  Var HTTPStatusCode As Integer
  
  If f = Nil Or URLConnectionHost = "" Or (URLConnectionHost.left(7) <> "http://" And URLConnectionHost.left(8) <> "https://") Then
    Return Nil
  End If
  
  Try 'network timeout causes exception!
    #If TargetWindows Or TargetLinux Then
      tempURLConnection.AllowCertificateValidation = False 'Windows gets a Security Error if True
    #EndIf
    tempURLConnection.SendSync("GET", URLConnectionHost, f, URLConnectionTimeOut)
    HTTPStatusCode = tempURLConnection.HTTPStatusCode
    tempURLConnection.Disconnect
    
  Catch Error
    Return Nil
  End Try
  
  If f <> Nil And f.Exists Then 'And HTTPStatusCode = 0
    Return f
  Else
    Return Nil
  End If
      
End Function

Protected Function getURLConnectionFolderItemString(URLConnectionHost As String, URLConnectionTimeOut As Integer = 30) As String
  Var f As FolderItem = CommonFolders.getDownloadFolderItem("Temp.dat", True, True) 'get a temp FolderItem
  
  f = getURLConnectionFolderItem(URLConnectionHost, f, URLConnectionTimeOut)
  
  If f <> Nil And f.Exists Then
    Return CommonFolders.getFileToString(f, True).DefineEncoding(Encodings.UTF8) 'read FolderItem as Binary String
  Else
    Return ""
  End If
      
End Function

Protected Function getFileToString(f As FolderItem, asBinary As Boolean = False) As String
  'converts the contents of a file to a string
  'CopyFile creates a read only file, whereas this routine creates a file that can be written to
  Var tempTextInputStream As TextInputStream
  Var tempBinaryStream As BinaryStream
  Var returnString As String
  
  If f = Nil Or Not f.Exists Then
    Return "" ' "0"
  Else
    If asBinary Then
      tempBinaryStream = BinaryStream.Open(f)
      returnString = tempBinaryStream.Read(tempBinaryStream.Length)
      'tempBinaryStream.Flush
      tempBinaryStream.Close
      Return returnString
      
    Else
      tempTextInputStream = TextInputStream.Open(f)
      returnString = tempTextInputStream.ReadAll
      tempTextInputStream.Close
      Return returnString
    End If
  End If
      
End Function