Can you call a webservice from TSQL code?

Question

Is there a way to call out from a TSQL stored procedure or function to a webservice?

Answer 1

Here'a an example to get some data from a webservice. In this case parse a user agent string to JSON.

--first configure MSSQL to enable calling out to a webservice (1=true, 0=false)
sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1;  
GO  
RECONFIGURE;  
GO  
sp_configure 'Ole Automation Procedures', 1;  
GO  
RECONFIGURE;  
GO  

CREATE PROCEDURE CallWebAPI_ParseUserAgent @UserAgent VARCHAR(512)
AS
BEGIN
    SET NOCOUNT ON;

    DECLARE @Object INT;
    DECLARE @ResponseText AS VARCHAR(8000);
    DECLARE @url VARCHAR(512)

    SET @url = 'http://www.useragentstring.com/?getJSON=all&uas=' + @UserAgent;

    EXEC sp_OACreate 'WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5.1', @Object OUT;
    EXEC sp_OAMethod @Object, 'Open', NULL, 'GET', @url, 'false'
    EXEC sp_OAMethod @Object, 'setRequestHeader', NULL, 'Content-Type', 'application/json'
    EXEC sp_OAMethod @Object, 'send'
    EXEC sp_OAMethod @Object, 'responseText', @ResponseText OUTPUT
    SELECT @ResponseText
    EXEC sp_OADestroy @Object
END

--example how to call the API
CallWebAPI_ParseUserAgent 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; rv:53.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/53.0'