The RFC 977 describes the list of commands and responses that a news server accepts. Use the Command property to send custom commands to the news server. Use the Error event to notify your application that an error occurs on the news server. Use the Date property to convert a DATE value to the YYMMDD format. Use the Time property to convert a TIME value to the HHMMSS format.

The following samples show how we can handle the NEWNEWS command. The syntax for the NEWNEWS command is

NEWNEWS newsgroups date time [GMT] [<distribution>]

The NEWNEWS command gets a list of message-ids of articles posted or received to the specified newsgroup since "date" will be listed. The format of the listing will be one message-id per line, as though text were being sent. A single line consisting solely of one period followed by CR-LF will terminate the list. The samples use also the HEAD and BODY commands to get the header and the body for a specified article base on its identifier.

So, the command that we have to send to the server is "NEWNEWS vb.general " & n.Date(Date). The Command property will get the list of message-ids, line by line. We are using the Split function to get line by line from the response. 

The following sample displays the articles that have been posted since yesterday, on a specified news group:

Dim WithEvents n As EXNNTPLibCtl.NNTP

Private Sub Form_Load()
    Dim s As String, a() As String, i As Long
    Set n = New NNTP
    n.Connect "news.devx.com"
    s = n.Command("NEWNEWS vb.general " & n.Date(Date - 1))
    a = Split(s, vbCrLf)
    For i = LBound(a) To UBound(a)
        Debug.Print "--------------------"
        Debug.Print n.Command("HEAD " & a(i))
        Debug.Print "--------------------"
        Debug.Print n.Command("BODY " & a(i))
    Next
End Sub

Private Sub n_Error(ByVal Command As String, ByVal Error As String)
    Debug.Print "Error: " & Error
End Sub

The following sample displays all articles that have been posted since yesterday, from all news groups that start with "vb":

Dim WithEvents n As EXNNTPLibCtl.NNTP

Private Sub Form_Load()
    Dim s As String, a() As String, i As Long
    Set n = New NNTP
    n.Connect "news.devx.com"
    s = n.Command("NEWNEWS vb.* " & n.Date(Date - 1))
    a = Split(s, vbCrLf)
    For i = LBound(a) To UBound(a)
        Debug.Print "--------------------"
        Debug.Print n.Command("HEAD " & a(i))
        Debug.Print "--------------------"
        Debug.Print n.Command("BODY " & a(i))
    Next
End Sub

Private Sub n_Error(ByVal Command As String, ByVal Error As String)
    Debug.Print "Error: " & Error
End Sub