You might encounter a situation where you need to Post to a web page and read it’s response.

Here’s a function that uses System.Net.HttpWebRequest and System.Net.HttpWebResponse to do just that.

''Usage' Dim xmlDoc As Xml.XmlDocument' xmlDoc.Load(MakeHttpRequest("request=listPersons&filter=last(a*)","      /requestManager.php","application/x-www-form-urlencoded")) Protected Function MakeHttpRequest(ByVal      data As String, ByVal url As String, ByVal contentType As String) As System.IO.Stream      Dim retVal As System.IO.Stream Dim httpRequest As System.Net.HttpWebRequest Dim httpResponse      As System.Net.HttpWebResponse Dim encoding As New System.Text.UTF8Encoding Dim uri      As New System.Uri(url) Dim postBytes As Byte() postBytes = encoding.GetBytes(data)      httpRequest = CType(System.Net.HttpWebRequest.Create(uri), System.Net.HttpWebRequest)      httpRequest.ContentLength = postBytes.Length httpRequest.Method = "POST" httpRequest.ContentType      = contentType Dim postStream As System.IO.Stream = httpRequest.GetRequestStream()      postStream.Write(postBytes, 0, postBytes.Length) postStream.Close() httpResponse =      CType(httpRequest.GetResponse(), System.Net.HttpWebResponse) retVal = httpResponse.GetResponseStream()      Return retVal End Function

Variation: If the webpage you are calling expects xml you could easily replace and pass a valid xml string as data
replace
httpRequest.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
with
httpRequest.ContentType = "text/xml"

You could even go further and return an xml document if the expected datatype is “text/xml”.

Read a great book: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins