WoRMS - World Register of Marine Species

Calling the WoRMS webservice from Microsoft Excel 2007

This tutorial assumes you are using any Microsoft Windows Operating System with Office 2007 installed

Step 1: Install the Microsoft Office XP Web Services Toolkit 2.0

Download Microsoft Office XP Web Services Toolkit 2.0

Note: although the use of the Web Services Toolkit is deprecated, it will work for Office 2007.
If you want to use the Microsoft supported method, follow this tutorial

Step 2: Enable the developer tab in Excel

Start Excel, click on the Office button, choose "Popular" and check "Show Developer tab in the Ribbon".

Show the developer ribbon

Step 3: Lauch the Web Service References Tool

Open Visual Basic by going to the first option on the developer tab on the Ribbon.

In Visual Basic, go to Tools > Web Service References. Selecting this brings up this dialog:

Toolkit

Step 4: Generate the VBA code

Select the checkbox Web Service URL and enter this value: http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=soap&wsdl=1
Then click 'Search', a search result will appear in the top right. Check the box to it's left.
Clicking the Add button will make Excel generate VBA code for the service.

Class

Step 5: Create a Visual Basic module using the Visual basic Editor

Add this piece of code by choosing Insert->Module. Copy this code into your Excel VBA module

Option Explicit
'Excel VBA Function to call the AphiaNameService
 Public Function getAphiaID(taxon As String) As Single
  Dim aphia As New clsws_AphiaNameService
  getAphiaID = aphia.wsm_getAphiaID(taxon, True)
 End Function

Your screen should look something like this:

Module

Close the VB Editor.

Step 3: Using the function in Excel

You can now use the function getAphiaID as you would any built-in Excel function.
Select the cell you want the value displayed in, then go to the Insert menu and choose Function.
In the Paste Function dialog box, scroll down to User Defined functions and you should see getAphiaID listed:

$\"Function\"$

The result should be something like this:

Result

Download this example.
Download elaborate example for getAphiaRecordById.
Download elaborate checklist example that uses getAphiaID/getAphiaRecordByID/getAphiaVernacularsByID.

Credits for this tutorial go to Simon St.Laurent (Oreilly) and Christopher Condit (San Diego Supercomputer Center).