Is there a way I can access the Exchange Mails/Calendars/Addressbook without .NET or non cross platform thing? I want to access them with C++ but on both MS and Linux. Their docs says it is possible but there is no any non C#/.Net example.
EWS combines the functionality that is included in WebDAV and CDOEX, and provides logic that makes common scenarios such as calendaring workflows easy to implement. EWS is a SOAP-based XML Web service that can be accessed remotely from any operating system and any language that can send requests over HTTPS.
Please share with me if there is any way or I'm missing something!
Thanks!
I agree that there are few examples outside the C# / Powershell realm. That being said, if you stick to plain EWS, it should be possible. I have no idea the WebServce access from C++ is anything similar to C#. In C# you point Visual Studio (or wsdl.exe) to the WSDL of the WebService and it will create a set of proxy classes which do all the SOAP handling.
If you don't have something similar with C++ you'll need to build the SOAP requests yourself.
See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb204119(v=exchg.140).aspx for a reference to the EWS operations and XML elements.
One thing you might want to utilize is the EWS Managed API. It has a nice tracing feature which dumps all the requests/responses to the console. So, you can write up a small test program and see what the request has to look like. This could help you building the EWS requests on the C++ side.
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In the place I work there are some software written in C# and some written in C++ (the most important ones). Some time ago we decided it would be a good idea to track any possible problem in the software, by sending stack trace and exception information over a web service. So I came with a WCF Service, that gets the information and store them on a database and send an automatic e-mail. It worked, we had to secure it through password, it's done, but now I want our other software, the one written in C++, to use this webservice (this software is used both on windows and linux, so we can't just make a call to another software in the user machine).
I've googled about it, and found this tutorial on how to use gSOAP, which so far didn't help me very much (lots of errors, it is not very detailed, and the web.config file is impossible to read). I was wondering if is there any other way to achieve this. In adition, since I'm using authentication on my webservice, it now has a wsHttpBinding (which AFAIK isn't supported by gSOAP).
Can you guys help me out?
Since your WCF service is in C# with .NET, and the only issue is getting the C++ application to be able to talk to it, one way is to follow the advice in REST / SOAP Endpoints for a WCF service and related articles.
Your C# programs continue to have the full SOAP access to your service.
Your C++ programs could do something like this for REST access:
"Browse" to the HTTP GET URL for the service command you wanted.
Then toss (or parse and use) whatever response came back.
It is a pretty minimal change to your WCF service to offer both SOAP and REST.
The REST ability opens your service to JavaScript as well as C++ clients.
You may need to restrict the interface to simple data, or class objects that are easy to parse in C++.
Will the machines running the C++ applications have the .NET Framework installed?
Check out: Create WCF service for unmanaged C++ clients
I'm designing a set of web services to allow our clients to connect from their apps to one of our systems. Our clients have their apps developed in all varieties of frameworks (.NET, Java, PHP, Python and even the occasional all JS app), so obviously WS is the way to go.
Investigating a little about truly interop WS I've found that the way to go is to design first the WSDL and XSD and derive the implementations from there.
What i'm really looking for is guidance if this is really the way to go. I've read that WCF creates interoperable WS but i'm not a fan of MS creating something standard.
Should i use WCF or there is a good set of tools for designing WSDL and XSD without the pain i'm expecting.
Thanks in advance
If you want to interoperate with JavaScript, then best to make more of a REST style API. This is basically just standard HTTP calls, so you're interopable from the get-go. However, you've kindof indicated that you want to use SOAP, so ...
If you're going with SOAP/WSDL, I'd definitely advocate using the server platform - yes, even .NET - to generate the WSDL, then simply check that the options you're using are producing a good, interopable WSDL.
I'm a Java developer with a history of PHP & Perl, and I've interoperated with .Net on a number of WS projects, from both sides of the coin (as server and client). There's usually no major problems - just be wary of a couple of things:
certain proprietary elements that MS
mixes in with the open standards. For
example, they may offer NTLM-style
authentication, which really isn't
needed in most use cases,
particularly when you're using SSL
certificates.
SOAP has taken a few
different forms over the years
(Document/Literal, RPC/Encoded, ...)
you'll probably find you don't need
to worry about this, as RPC/Encoded
died along with old frameworks, and
most modern frameworks tend towards
Document/Literal
SOAP offers a few
bolt-on standards (e.g. MTOM & DIME
for attachments, and SOAP-WS for
authentication). Try to avoid those
bolt-ons, as different platforms
implement different subsets.
For security, I'd advise to use SSL for
the trust & confidentiality, and then
either HTTP basic auth, or simply custom
string tokens in your soap request definition.
Just keep the WSDL as minimal as possible, try interoperating quite early in the process, and you shouldn't have too many problems
You can use WCF and contract-first development.
If interoperability is the main concern then I would recommend using WCF to provide the service implementation but instead of relying on WCF to generate the service interface to use contract-first development to model the interface.
A really good article on how to develop this way is Schema-based Development with Windows Communication Foundation.
If you are going to roll your own WSDL and schemas you are probably going to want to get an editor like XmlSpy or LiquidXml. I like the price of LiquidXML (free!) but I can't recall if you have to pay for the web service features.
Another interesting tool for contract-first development with Visual Studio and WCF is WSCF.blue. I haven't used it but it does appear to be actively developed based on the WCSF.blue roadmap.
WSDL and XSD are language independent, you just have to have some mechanism to communicate using other languages. Good thing for you to do would be IMHO core data design, so you would not need so many XSD for the same data entities.
I'm not sure what you mean when you ask "should I use WCF"? WCF is the current mechanism for developing web services (and other kinds of communicating services) on .NET. There is no other current mechanism. The others are obsolete, or else considered "legacy technology".
We're looking at developing a Web Service to function as a basis for a browser display/gui for a networked security prototype written in C++. My experience with web services has been limited to Java. I prefer Web Services in Java because it's on the "beaten path".
One sure was to do this would be to simply code a Java client which invokes the web service, and call it as a command line with parameters from the C++ code.
It's not ideal, since generally speaking an API is preferable, but in this case it would work and be a pretty safe solution.
A resource which does handles web service development in C++ is called gSOAP, at this url: http://gsoap2.sourceforge.net
Any thought on which is a better approach? Has anyone used gSOAP, and if so, what did you think?
I'd done things with gSOAP, it's not awful. I'm increasingly opposed to the RPC model for web services, though; it forces you into a lot of connection and session state that adds complexity. A REST interface is simpler and more robust.
To me is Axis C++.
For RPC style, have a look at Thrift,
I found it quite better ( faster, clearer, a lot of languages implementations) than soap.
My colleague ended up using a combination of Axis2 / java (for the service) and gsoap for the client. He created the wsdl from the Java service by generating it from a C++ header (using c2wsdl (?) or something like that. He said it was better than using a Java interface because that generated two sets of wsdl, for seperate versions of soap.
Then he used wsdl2java to generate the webservice and a test web client. Once we got that working, he used gsoap to create the web client (in C++), and it worked fine.
thanks for all the answers! I ended using a combination of them.
I had very good experience with gsoap - very simple, performance is good.
If it is acceptable to run only on Windows, there is a brand-new API for that purpose: WWSAPI
Instead of calling the java client from the command line, you can create a java virtual machine inside your C app, instantiate the class and call any methods. This is what the java.exe app does and I think the source code is included in the jdk.
Depends on how low level you want to go. You might checkout yield.
I apologize if if this is a bonehead question.
I've used WSDL to generate code to talk to web services, but my question is about using it to actually generate web services.
Let's say that I have a device that is going to communicate with a web service. The web service in question doesn't actually exist and is out of my control. That is, the party wishing to process messages from my device must implement the service.
The service in this case is extremely basic. It's simply a small collection of methods that receive messages and return status codes. It's basically a middleman between my device and 3rd party software.
It would be really cool if I could supply something like a WSDL 2.0 document that they could then use to actually generate the boilerplate code for the service and methods they are required to implement...preferably in Java (Axis) and .NET friendly frameworks.
In other words, I want to use WSDL to generate the service, not the client. Or maybe I don't want WSDL at all. What techniques would you recommend to make this as painless as possible?
SvcUtil.exe for the Windows Communication Foundation technology in .NET 3.0+ can do some of what you're asking, i.e. generation of contract interfaces and basic client code using a predetermined WSDL as input.
Now, this will not fully generate the actual service, just the contract interface. I don't know of an easy way to do this as it is probably not a very common case. Essentially what you're asking is a slightly more automated version of what Visual Studio does when you create a class and use the "Implement interface" feature (which I believe is accomplished mostly through VS templates).
My gut feel is that document based web services are preferred in practice - is this other peoples experience? Are they easier to support? (I noted that SharePoint uses Any for the "document type" in its WSDL interface, I guess that makes it Document based).
Also - are people offering both WSDL and Rest type services now for the same functionality? WSDL is popular for code generation, but for front ends like PHP and Rails they seem to prefer rest.
Document versus RPC is only a question if you are using SOAP Web Services which require a service description (WSDL). RESTful web services do not not use WSDL because the service can't be described by it, and the feeling is that REST is simpler and easier to understand. Some people have proposed WADL as a way to describe REST services.
Languages like Python, Ruby and PHP make it easier to work with REST. the WSDL is used to generate C# code (a web service proxy) that can be easily called from a static language. This happens when you add a Service Reference or Web Reference in Visual Studio.
Whether you provide SOAP or REST services depends on your user population. Whether the services are to be used over the internet or just inside your organization affects your choice. SOAP may have some features (WS-* standards) that work well for B2B or internal use, but suck for an internet service.
Document/literal versus RPC for SOAP services are described on this IBM DevelopWorks article. Document/literal is generally considered the best to use in terms of interoperability (Java to .NET etc). As to whether it is easier to support, that depends on your circumstances. My personal view is that people tend to make this stuff more complicated than it needs to be, and REST's simpler approach is superior.
As mentioned it is better to choose the Document Literal over RPC encoded whenever possible.
It is true that the old java libraries (Axis1, Glue and other prehistoric stuff) support only RPC encoded, however in today's most modern Java SOAP libs just does not support it (e.x. AXIS2, XFire, CXF).
Therefore try to expose RPC encoded service only if you know that you need to deal with a consumer that can not do better. But then again maybe just XML RPC could help for these legacy implementations.
BiranLy's answer is excellent. I would just like to add that document-vs-RPC can come down to implementation issues as well. We have found Microsoft to be Document-preferring, while our Java-based libraries were RPC-based. Whatever you choose, make sure you know what other potential clients will assume as well.