C# – After creating a wcf service how to tell whether its restful or soap from the wsdl

crestsoapwcf

I created a service and I'm presented with a page saying:

You have created a service.

To test this service, you will need to
create a client and use it to call the
service. You can do this using the
svcutil.exe tool from the command line
with the following syntax:

But how do I tell if its a SOAP or a REST service from that? How would I tell from the wsdl etc?

Service config:

<services> 
    <service name="VLSContentService"
             behaviorConfiguration="VLSContentServiceBehaviour" > 
        <endpoint name="rest" 
            address="" 
            behaviorConfiguration="VLSContentServiceEndpointBehaviour" 
            binding="webHttpBinding" 
            contract="IVLSContentServiceREST" /> 
        <endpoint name="soap" 
            address="soap" 
            binding="basicHttpBinding" 
            contract="IVLSContentServiceREST"/> 
    </service> 
</services>

UPDATE:

Hi Mark,

My config is:

 <services>
      <service behaviorConfiguration="VLSContentServiceBehaviour" name="VLSContentService">
        <endpoint name="rest" address="" behaviorConfiguration="VLSContentServiceEndpointBehaviour" binding="webHttpBinding" contract="IVLSContentServiceREST" />
        <endpoint name="soap" address="soap" binding="basicHttpBinding" contract="IVLSContentServiceREST"/>
      </service>
    </services>

So basically I browse to the .svc file and I see a link for a wsdl. But how do I know if thats for the SOAP or REST endpoint. Have I even configured it correctly?

Thanks

UPDATE: 17:49 (UK TIME)

<system.serviceModel>

  <!---Add the service-->
  <services>
    <service behaviorConfiguration="VLSContentServiceBehaviour" name="VLSContentService">
       <endpoint name="rest" 
           address="" 
           behaviorConfiguration="VLSContentServiceEndpointBehaviour" 
           binding="webHttpBinding" 
           contract="IVLSContentServiceREST" />
    </service>
 </services>
 <!---Add the behaviours-->
 <behaviors>
    <serviceBehaviors>
       <behavior name="VLSContentServiceBehaviour">
          <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true" />
          <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true" />
       </behavior>
    </serviceBehaviors>
    <endpointBehaviors>
       <behavior name="VLSContentServiceEndpointBehaviour">
         <webHttp />
       </behavior>
    </endpointBehaviors>
  </behaviors>
  <serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="false" />
</system.serviceModel>

marc_s UPDATE: 18:22 (UK TIME)

Pete, try this – no metadata publishing, nothing – just webHttpBinding – you should not see any WSDL anymore…

<system.serviceModel>
   <services>
      <service name="VLSContentService">
          <endpoint name="rest" 
              address="" 
              binding="webHttpBinding" 
              contract="IVLSContentServiceREST" />
      </service>
   </services>
   <serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="false" />
</system.serviceModel>

Best Answer

The service can be both REST and SOAP, in a way that a WCF service can have multiple endpoints, including a mix of both SOAP and REST. On the WSDL, the SOAP endpoints will show up in the wsdl:definitions/wsdl:service/wsdl:port element; the REST endpoints will not. So if you only have one endpoint in the service, if there is a wsdl:port entry in the WSDL, then it's a SOAP endpoint; otherwise it's REST.

You can run the code below and look at the wsdl to see that it only shows up one wsdl:port element, for the SOAP endpoint.

public class StackOverflow_6414181
{
    [ServiceContract]
    public interface ITest
    {
        [OperationContract]
        [WebGet]
        string Echo(string text);
    }
    public class Service : ITest
    {
        public string Echo(string text)
        {
            return text;
        }
    }
    public static void Test()
    {
        string baseAddress = "http://" + Environment.MachineName + ":8000/Service";
        ServiceHost host = new ServiceHost(typeof(Service), new Uri(baseAddress));
        host.Description.Behaviors.Add(new ServiceMetadataBehavior { HttpGetEnabled = true });
        host.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(ITest), new BasicHttpBinding(), "soap");
        host.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(ITest), new WebHttpBinding(), "rest").Behaviors.Add(new WebHttpBehavior());
        host.Open();
        Console.WriteLine("Host opened");

        Console.Write("Press ENTER to close the host");
        Console.ReadLine();
        host.Close();
    }
}

Reply to the post for SOAP and RESTful POX(XML)

For plain old XML as return format, this is an example that would work both for SOAP and XML.

[ServiceContract(Namespace = "http://test")]
public interface ITestService
{
    [OperationContract]
    [WebGet(UriTemplate = "accounts/{id}")]
    Account[] GetAccount(string id);
}

POX behavior for REST Plain Old XML

<behavior name="poxBehavior">
  <webHttp/>
</behavior>

Endpoints

<services>
  <service name="TestService">
    <endpoint address="soap" binding="basicHttpBinding" contract="ITestService"/>
    <endpoint address="xml" binding="webHttpBinding"  behaviorConfiguration="poxBehavior" contract="ITestService"/>
  </service>
</services>

Service will be available at

REST request try it in browser,

http://www.example.com/xml/accounts/A123

SOAP request client endpoint configuration for SOAP service after adding the service reference,

  <client>
    <endpoint address="http://www.example.com/soap" binding="basicHttpBinding"
      contract="ITestService" name="BasicHttpBinding_ITestService" />
  </client>

in C#

TestServiceClient client = new TestServiceClient();
client.GetAccount("A123");

Another way of doing it is to expose two different service contract and each one with specific configuration. This may generate some duplicates at code level, however at the end of the day, you want to make it working.

Actionscript – How to pass “Null” (a real surname!) to a SOAP web service in ActionScript 3

Tracking it down

At first I thought this was a coercion bug where null was getting coerced to "null" and a test of "null" == null was passing. It's not. I was close, but so very, very wrong. Sorry about that!

I've since done lots of fiddling on wonderfl.net and tracing through the code in mx.rpc.xml.*. At line 1795 of XMLEncoder (in the 3.5 source), in setValue, all of the XMLEncoding boils down to

currentChild.appendChild(xmlSpecialCharsFilter(Object(value)));

which is essentially the same as:

currentChild.appendChild("null");

This code, according to my original fiddle, returns an empty XML element. But why?

Cause

According to commenter Justin Mclean on bug report FLEX-33664, the following is the culprit (see last two tests in my fiddle which verify this):

var thisIsNotNull:XML = <root>null</root>;
if(thisIsNotNull == null){
    // always branches here, as (thisIsNotNull == null) strangely returns true
    // despite the fact that thisIsNotNull is a valid instance of type XML
}

When currentChild.appendChild is passed the string "null", it first converts it to a root XML element with text null, and then tests that element against the null literal. This is a weak equality test, so either the XML containing null is coerced to the null type, or the null type is coerced to a root xml element containing the string "null", and the test passes where it arguably should fail. One fix might be to always use strict equality tests when checking XML (or anything, really) for "nullness."

Solution

The only reasonable workaround I can think of, short of fixing this bug in every damn version of ActionScript, is to test fields for "null" and escape them as CDATA values.

CDATA values are the most appropriate way to mutate an entire text value that would otherwise cause encoding/decoding problems. Hex encoding, for instance, is meant for individual characters. CDATA values are preferred when you're escaping the entire text of an element. The biggest reason for this is that it maintains human readability.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

REST / SOAP endpoints for a WCF service

Reply to the post for SOAP and RESTful POX(XML)

Actionscript – How to pass “Null” (a real surname!) to a SOAP web service in ActionScript 3

Tracking it down

Cause

Solution

Related Topic