Suppose you need to send a URL to a server, which then returns some content (the content can be HTML, XML, etc.). Using the .NET Framework’s WebClient method, you can return the content as a string.

Public Function get_XML(ByVal query As String) As String        Try            Dim myWebClient As New WebClient            Dim mydatabuffer As Byte() = myWebClient.DownloadData(query)            Dim xml As String            xml = Encoding.Default.GetString(mydatabuffer)            Return xml        Catch ex As Exception            Console.WriteLine(ex.ToString)        End Try    End Function.