Get result of a JS file directly? (sorta AJAX related)

Question

As I have known AJAX in the past, it has gone something like this: a server side language (in my case PHP) file generates xHTML has JS attached. The JS queries another file, with parameters set in GET or POST. This queried file's entire output is returned to the JS, which in turn makes a change on the original xHTML.

Now, I'm trying to do something which is sorta related to those same techniques. I want to query URLs from Excel, like

www.example.com/distance?to=FTW&from=ACR

and the entire return value would be something like

2231

If I just query the JS file directly, it won't get run.

If I set up an html page, it's trivial to have it display nothing but that number, but the return value of the query contains a bunch of tags.

How else can I do this? What if I had a PHP file, that runs the JS, then returns its value?

The business logic of getting the number has to be in javascript.

Answer 1

Simply add a callback function to handle the value

in your main file:

<script type="text/javascript">/* <![CDATA[ */
   function valcallback(val){
     // so something with val
   }
/* ]]> */</script>

in your JS file, return:

valcallback(2231);

and it'll run like javascript.

Answer 2

The Excel request side can be handled with this VBA code.

Sub GetDistance()

Dim objXML As Object
Dim strData As String
Dim strResponse As String

 strData = "to=FTW&from=ACR"
 Set objXML = CreateObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP")

 objXML.Open "POST", "www.example.com/distance?" & strData, False
 objXML.Send
 strResponse = objXML.responsetext
 MsgBox strResponse

End Sub