The best suggestion I can give is to leverage our already existing .NET sample. While it is written in C#, there are two simple options for using it in VB.NET.
- Build it into .dll files to incorporate as an import to your file
- Convert the source files from C# to VB.NET using a code converted (linked option has worked great for us in the past)
Using either of these options you won't have to write any code that directly accesses our API. You can use objects, such as a List object, to create and manipulate resources through our API. You can find a link to both here: http://community.constantcontact.com/t5/Documentation/Code-Samples/ba-p/25019
If this won't work for you, you will need to create the XML needed to create a List from our documentation by hand. The XML you create would then end up being the content of your HttpWebRequest object. Here is a shell of code, taken from your post, to get you started. Please note, this does not create the XML content. You will need to do that with whatever data you want to submit.
Public Shared Sub AddNewContactList(ByVal sListName As String)
'Setup your variables
Dim ctu As String = GetCTU()
Dim ctp As String = GetCTP()
Dim sUri As String = "https://api.constantcontact.com/ws/customers/" & ctu & "/lists"
Dim sListUri As String = sListName
Dim sAPIKey As String = "CONSTANT_CONTACT_API_KEY"
Try
'Setup an HttpWebRequest to send the data
Dim address As New Uri(sUri)
Dim request As HttpWebRequest = TryCast(WebRequest.Create(address), HttpWebRequest)
request.Credentials = New NetworkCredential((sAPIKey & "%" & ctu), ctp)
request.Method = "POST"
request.ContentType = "application/atom+xml"
'Build an encoded string of the data to pass to Constant Contact
Dim data As New StringBuilder()
data.Append("<entry xmlns=""http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"">")
data.Append("<id>data:,</id>")
data.Append("<title />")
data.Append("<author />")
data.Append("<updated>2008-04-16</updated>")
data.Append("<content type=""application/vnd.ctct+xml"">")
data.Append("<OptInDefault>false</OptInDefault>")
data.Append("<Name>" & sListName & "</Name>")
data.Append("<SortOrder>99</SortOrder>")
data.Append("</ContactList>")
data.Append("</content>")
data.Append("</entry>")
'The "guts" of the code to execute the request and return a response
Dim byteData As Byte() = UTF8Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(data.ToString())
Dim st As String = String.Empty
request.ContentLength = byteData.Length
Using postStream As Stream = request.GetRequestStream()
postStream.Write(byteData, 0, byteData.Length)
End Using
Using response As HttpWebResponse = TryCast(request.GetResponse(), HttpWebResponse)
Dim reader As New StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream())
st = reader.ReadToEnd()
End Using
Catch ex As Exception
HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(ex.Message)
End Try
End Sub
Dave Berard
Senior Product Manager, Constant Contact
