My First Web Service

[Simon Harris]

Hi All,

I am just creating my first web service, which will provide a phone book
lookup to one of our partner organisations.

So far, using VS.Net, I have managed to produce a service which has one
method:

<WebMethod()> _
Public Function ContactSearch(ByVal Surname As String) As String
Return "a surname"
End Function

This works Ok, and returns the following:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<string
xmlns="http://tempuri.org/myfirstwebservice/Service1">harris</string>

I would like to extend this to include complete contact details, so the
resulting XML is something like:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<results>
<contact id="1">
<firstname>Fred</firstname>
<surname>Smith</surname>
</contact>
<contact id="2">
<firstname>Jane</firstname>
<surname>Smith</surname>
</contact>
</results>
</xml>
I guess my question is, how do I progmatically add the elements and
attributes?

I Googled for about an hour trying to find an example/tutorial, all the
sites I found seemed to have no more than the helloworld example.

Any advice will be much appreciated.

Regards,
Simon.

[Drew Marsh]

Simon Harris wrote:

I guess my question is, how do I progmatically add the elements and
attributes?

I Googled for about an hour trying to find an example/tutorial, all
the sites I found seemed to have no more than the helloworld example.

Considering what you'd like to return, I'd recommend the "simple" approach
of writing a custom .NET class marked up with the necessary Xml Serialization
attributes and returning that from your web method. Here's what your Contact
class might look like:

<codeSnippet language="C#">
[XmlType("Contact", Namespace="uri:marsh-samples-contactSearch")]
[XmlRoot("contact")]
public sealed class Contact
{
#region Fields

private int id;
private string firstName;
private string surname;

#endregion

#region Type specific properties

[XmlAttribute("id")]
public int Id
{
get
{
return this.id;
}

set
{
this.id = value;
}
}

[XmlElement("firstname")]
public string FirstName
{
get
{
return this.firstName;
}

set
{
this.firstName = value;
}
}

[XmlElement("surname")]
public string Surname
{
get
{
return this.surname;
}

set
{
this.surname = value;
}
}

#endregion
}
</codeSnippet>

And then your web method would change to look something like this:

<codeSnippet language="C#">
[WebMethod]
[SoapDocumentMethod(ParameterStyle=SoapParameterSty le.Bare, Use=SoapBindingUse.Literal)]
[return:XmlArray("results", Namespace="xmlns="uri:marsh-samples-contactSearch")]
[return:XmlArrayItem("contact", typeof(Contact), Namespace="xmlns="uri:marsh-samples-contactSearch")]
public Contact[] SearchContacts([XmlElement("surname", Namespace="xmlns="uri:marsh-samples-contactSearch")]
string surname)
{
// NOTE: in the real world you'd probably be looping through a DataReader
// or something to build these results
Contact sampleResult1 = new Contact();
sampleResult1.Id = 131;
sampleResult1.FirstName = "Drew";
sampleResult1.Surname = "Marsh";

Contact sampleResult2 = new Contact();
sampleResult2.Id = 123;
sampleResult2.FirstName = "Test";
sampleResult2.Surname = "Marsh";

return new Contact[] { sampleResult1, sampleResult2 };
}
</codeSnippet>

If you use this exact code, you'll end up with a SOAP request body that looks
like this:

<surname xmlns="uri:marsh-samples-contactSearch">Marsh</surname>

And a SOAP response body that looks exactly how you described:

<results xmlns="uri:marsh-samples-contactSearch">
<contact id="131">
<firstname>Drew</firstname>
<surname>Marsh</surname>
</contact>
<contact id="123">
<firstname>Test</firstname>
<surname>Marsh</surname>
</contact>
</results>

HTH,
Dre

[Simon Harris]

Thank You Drew for your reply.

Has anyone got a VB example to hand?

"Drew Marsh" <dr****@hotmail.no.spamming.com> wrote in message
news:98*********************@msnews.microsoft.com. ..

Simon Harris wrote:

I guess my question is, how do I progmatically add the elements and
attributes?

I Googled for about an hour trying to find an example/tutorial, all
the sites I found seemed to have no more than the helloworld example.

Considering what you'd like to return, I'd recommend the "simple" approach
of writing a custom .NET class marked up with the necessary Xml
Serialization attributes and returning that from your web method. Here's
what your Contact class might look like:

<codeSnippet language="C#">
[XmlType("Contact", Namespace="uri:marsh-samples-contactSearch")]
[XmlRoot("contact")]
public sealed class Contact
{
#region Fields

private int id;
private string firstName;
private string surname;

#endregion

#region Type specific properties

[XmlAttribute("id")]
public int Id
{
get
{
return this.id;
}

set
{
this.id = value;
} }

[XmlElement("firstname")]
public string FirstName
{
get
{
return this.firstName;
}

set
{
this.firstName = value;
}
}

[XmlElement("surname")]
public string Surname
{
get
{
return this.surname;
}

set
{
this.surname = value;
}
}

#endregion
}
</codeSnippet>

And then your web method would change to look something like this:

<codeSnippet language="C#">
[WebMethod]
[SoapDocumentMethod(ParameterStyle=SoapParameterSty le.Bare,
Use=SoapBindingUse.Literal)]
[return:XmlArray("results",
Namespace="xmlns="uri:marsh-samples-contactSearch")]
[return:XmlArrayItem("contact", typeof(Contact),
Namespace="xmlns="uri:marsh-samples-contactSearch")]
public Contact[] SearchContacts([XmlElement("surname",
Namespace="xmlns="uri:marsh-samples-contactSearch")] string surname)
{
// NOTE: in the real world you'd probably be looping through a DataReader
// or something to build these results
Contact sampleResult1 = new Contact();
sampleResult1.Id = 131;
sampleResult1.FirstName = "Drew";
sampleResult1.Surname = "Marsh";

Contact sampleResult2 = new Contact();
sampleResult2.Id = 123;
sampleResult2.FirstName = "Test";
sampleResult2.Surname = "Marsh";

return new Contact[] { sampleResult1, sampleResult2 };
}
</codeSnippet>

If you use this exact code, you'll end up with a SOAP request body that
looks like this:

<surname xmlns="uri:marsh-samples-contactSearch">Marsh</surname>

And a SOAP response body that looks exactly how you described:

<results xmlns="uri:marsh-samples-contactSearch">
<contact id="131">
<firstname>Drew</firstname>
<surname>Marsh</surname>
</contact>
<contact id="123">
<firstname>Test</firstname>
<surname>Marsh</surname>
</contact>
</results>

HTH,
Drew

[Drew Marsh]

> Thank You Drew for your reply.

Has anyone got a VB example to hand?

There's nothing C# specific about those examples. It's all about using the
attributes and VB is perfectly capable of doing the same thing. In C# attributes
are declared between the []s. So if you wanted to translate the code to VB
just change those to <>s instead. If you really can't translate from the
C# syntax I'll do it for you, but it's really not that hard.

Let me know,
Dre