C# – WCF and Soap 1.1

cnetsoapwcfweb services

I am trying to create a service that a 3rd party should hopefully consume.
The consumer is compatible with SOAP 1.1, which is why I am using basicHttpBinding for the server. When the actual request is made, something seems to go wrong with the content types expected by the server. Using basicHttpBinding I dont get why the server still expects 'application/soap+xml' which, to my knowledge, is only required by SOAP 1.2.

I've used wireshark to figure out exactly what those two were communicating about. See tcp stream and setup below.

Any help is appreciated.

3rd party app request

POST / HTTP/1.1

SOAPAction:
http://tempuri.org/ITestService/Hello

Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8

Host: shdesktop:8000

Content-Length: 297

Expect: 100-continue

Connection: Close

WCF Server response

HTTP/1.1 415 Cannot process the
message because the content type
'text/xml; charset=utf-8' was not the
expected type 'application/soap+xml;
charset=utf-8'.

Content-Length: 0

Server: Microsoft-HTTPAPI/2.0

Date: Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:03:19 GMT

Connection: close

Service configuration

<system.serviceModel>
    <services>
      <service behaviorConfiguration="behTestService" name="ConsoleApplication1.TestService">
        <endpoint address="" binding="mexHttpBinding" contract="IMetadataExchange" />
        <endpoint address="TestService" binding="basicHttpBinding"
            contract="ConsoleApplication1.ITestService" />
        <host>
          <baseAddresses>
            <add baseAddress="http://localhost:8000" />
          </baseAddresses>
        </host>
      </service>
    </services>
    <behaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>
        <behavior name="behTestService">
          <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true"/>
          <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true" />
        </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
    </behaviors>
  </system.serviceModel>

Best Answer

The basicHttpBinding does use SOAP 1.1 - but in that case, you would have a content type of application/soap+xml.

Since your client is sending text/xml - any chance they're expecting a REST interface? This would be handled by the WCF webHttpBinding.

Read more about REST in WCF on the MSDN WCF REST Developer Center and check out the Pluralsight screencast series on WCF REST - highly recommended!

This is the style that Microsoft tends to use in their examples.

It appears that the guidance in this area may have changed, as StyleCop now enforces the use of the C# specific aliases.

C# – How to create an Excel (.XLS and .XLSX) file in C# without installing Microsoft Office

You can use a library called ExcelLibrary. It's a free, open source library posted on Google Code:

ExcelLibrary

This looks to be a port of the PHP ExcelWriter that you mentioned above. It will not write to the new .xlsx format yet, but they are working on adding that functionality in.

It's very simple, small and easy to use. Plus it has a DataSetHelper that lets you use DataSets and DataTables to easily work with Excel data.

ExcelLibrary seems to still only work for the older Excel format (.xls files), but may be adding support in the future for newer 2007/2010 formats.

You can also use EPPlus, which works only for Excel 2007/2010 format files (.xlsx files). There's also NPOI which works with both.

There are a few known bugs with each library as noted in the comments. In all, EPPlus seems to be the best choice as time goes on. It seems to be more actively updated and documented as well.

Also, as noted by @АртёмЦарионов below, EPPlus has support for Pivot Tables and ExcelLibrary may have some support (Pivot table issue in ExcelLibrary)

Here are a couple links for quick reference:
ExcelLibrary - GNU Lesser GPL
EPPlus - GNU (LGPL) - No longer maintained
EPPlus 5 - Polyform Noncommercial - Starting May 2020
NPOI - Apache License

Here some example code for ExcelLibrary:

Here is an example taking data from a database and creating a workbook from it. Note that the ExcelLibrary code is the single line at the bottom:

//Create the data set and table
DataSet ds = new DataSet("New_DataSet");
DataTable dt = new DataTable("New_DataTable");

//Set the locale for each
ds.Locale = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;
dt.Locale = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;

//Open a DB connection (in this example with OleDB)
OleDbConnection con = new OleDbConnection(dbConnectionString);
con.Open();

//Create a query and fill the data table with the data from the DB
string sql = "SELECT Whatever FROM MyDBTable;";
OleDbCommand cmd = new OleDbCommand(sql, con);
OleDbDataAdapter adptr = new OleDbDataAdapter();

adptr.SelectCommand = cmd;
adptr.Fill(dt);
con.Close();

//Add the table to the data set
ds.Tables.Add(dt);

//Here's the easy part. Create the Excel worksheet from the data set
ExcelLibrary.DataSetHelper.CreateWorkbook("MyExcelFile.xls", ds);

Creating the Excel file is as easy as that. You can also manually create Excel files, but the above functionality is what really impressed me.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

C# – the difference between String and string in C#

This is the style that Microsoft tends to use in their examples.

C# – How to create an Excel (.XLS and .XLSX) file in C# without installing Microsoft Office

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