I've got a Web Service written using C# in Visual Studio 2008 (I've also written it in VS 2005).
I can write a test windows form app to consume the service no problem.
The problem I have is consuming it from C#/VS2003 (or php which is my real problem). It just gives me the error:
"Cannot implicitly convert type 'TestIntel.WebIntel.GetSitesResponseGetSitesResult' to 'System.Data.DataTable"
The Web mthod does return a DataTable; as I said this works fine if the consumer was built in VS2005/2008. What gives?
In order to consume a DataTable, the calling points (php and .net 1.1) need to know how to deserialize it into usable object.
This means that they would have to have a similiar object that the data can be deserialized into.
Obviously, PHP can't do that. And the reason for the .net 1.1 error is that the DataTable object changed quite a bit between 1.1 and 2.0. In fact, Microsoft says that the .Net 1.1 datatable object is BY DESIGN not supposed to be serialized through a web service. ( [http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306134][1] )
If you are looking for a real cross language way of doing this then you need to serialize your response into a standard XML object. Which could be parsed correctly by any language. This is a little more work, but results in a usable service.
Related
I have developed a WebService in PHP using SoapDiscovery class made by Braulio José Solano Rojas but with some adjustments made by me in order to support complex types.
The problem is that I can use the webservice in PHP client, but not in VS 2012. When adding the Web reference, Web Service methods are detected and I can add the reference correctly, but when I try to use it, intellisense does not show it, so that I cannot instantiate it and do nothing. I can, however, use a Webservice that does not use complex types.
The WSDL is at: http://feriados.servicios.desytec.com/feriados?wsdl
Please advise me.
Delphi used to include a demos folder for web Services, but no longer seems to include this.
I just tried the Delphi 7 demo projects (SOAPDMServerWAD, a server with almost no UI at all, and SOAPDMClient) and was unable to get them to function, even in Delphi 7.
If anybody has ever made a similar demo work in Delphi XE, or Delphi 2010, identical to the old SOAPDMServerWAD+SoapDMClient demos, working in Delphi XE, and with at least the minimal UI that comes from the Delphi SOAP Server application wizard, that would be perfect.
Update: The demo appears all the way up to Delphi 2010 but uses the now-obsoleted WAD (web-app-debugger), I tried to port it to the new Indy runtime/web-app-development-harnessing-code, but I can't seem to get it working. The demo runs, but the server has no User interface, and does not appear to be running any HTTP server (tested using a regular web browser, via http://localhost:port/ urls. By the way, try googling for a demo, and this url comes up, and I asked less than an hour ago. That's scary, google.
Update2 See my own answer below, a link is coming soon with working code.
I have posted the complete set of demos for SOAP on CodeCentral as item 28789.
These contain every single one of the Delphi 2007 era SOAP demos from the WebServices folder, now updated for Delphi XE and XE2, including converting the old WAD servers into new INDY VCL servers. You'd think that was impressive, except it's not. It's really easy. Just use the wizard to create a new project, and then add the web service interface and implementation units, and any other units that belong in the old demo, to the project. Once they're added to the project, they just work. Basic demo SOAP Servers are really easy to build in Delphi, once you have a working demo, you'll find it's pretty easy to modify and extend it.
The demo that best answers the question I asked above is in the SOAPDataModule sub-folder.
The basic problems with the demo from the 2007 era are two:
The WAD (web app debugger) is gone. you have to make a new server using the Indy server, for optimal demo purposes, saving you from using WAD (which is gone) or setting up ISAPI environment, under IIS, which is hardly ideal for demo purposes. The new demo project I made is called SoapDMServerINDY, and it consists of a data module (datamod_u.pas), a VCL form User Interface unit (IndyServerVCLFormUnit.pas) and an Indy Server web module, called IndyServerWebModule.pas.
The Delphi 2007 demo broke thanks to the new practice of having a Debug/Win32 subfolder that the demo executable is now in, you need to go up further. I fixed the demo server so that it warns you with an error message if the data files cannot be located, saving you from the mysterious "XML parsing error". I also added some error checking in a few of the demos so that it tells you that you need to install interbase for this demo to work, since some of the demos require Interbase installed and running, and one requires an alias called IBLOCAL to exist, and preferably a table called EMPLOYEE to exist.
The elements of this demo are a server (SoapDMServerINDY, based on the code from SOAPDMServerWAD), and the client SOAPDMClient which connects to the demo and has two pages, one page will show basic data access via a DBGrid + dataset remoting, and the second page shows how to invoke a custom SOAP method.
To use the demo: You have to start the server, click the start button, then start the client and click Connect.
I'm considering using an XML dsig for basic app licensing. The app is native windows code (no .net). I can easily use .net to create a dsig offline, but then I want to verify it in native c++. From what I've found so far MSXML V5 will do the job, but musn't be used and V6 removes support for dsigs.
So how can I easily verify an XML dsig produced by .net code in native C++?
Unfortunately, XML Signatures comes with MSXML 5.0 only. The thing is that XML-DSig isn't actually considered a feature of MSXML. It's best to consider MSXML 5.0 an offshoot - the strange step brother of MSXML - instead of part of the line. They would have been better off naming it something besides MSXML for all the confusion it has caused. There's barely any documentation for it and no way to distribute it. Even the XML Team at Microsoft says "Don't use it".
But all that doesn't help you. The real problem is that XML Digital Signatures are tricky things. MSXML 5.0 only implemented it because MS Office had total control over the XML; and because of that, could get consistent results. There's no guarantee that an XML signature generated from .NET is interoperable with MSXML 5.0. You might even have inconsistent results, where it works sometimes and doesn't work other times.
What you'll need to do is to write managed C++ code where you can use the same .NET features that generated the signature in the first place. It's not native C++, but it will get you consistent results. The only other alternative is to find a library that you can use in both .NET and C++ that can generate a digital signature.
How to: Sign XML Documents with Digital Signatures
How to: Verify the Digital Signatures of XML Documents
I've just started to use VS2010 and with it comes c# 4.0.
I have since been using the default values for some of my methods, which has allowed me to remove some overloads that performed this operation.
My problem is as follows:
I have a library project that has several classes that I use for various things throughout several other projects. The default values work well here.
Another project is a web service that I use to perform some tasks on a remote server. No errors are shown (or warnings) when I compile this project that the above methods won't work. It compiles fine.
However, when I add this service to another project as a Service Reference, it doesn't seem to see that the method has default values and so complains I am not supplying enough arguments.
I re-deployed my service and updated the service reference, but it is still the same. I also just noticed that a previously working method that uses an 'out' argument (i.e.e MyMethod(out String arg1, String arg2)) doesn't seem to work either now.
Any suggestions? I'm not aware that I have changed any config settings that would do this, so I assume it must be C# 4.0. Having said that, the out argument was working with 4.0 last week :S
Thanks for any help offered...
Cheers
Neil
I wouldn't be surprised to hear that default values specified in a web service aren't reflected in the proxy code generated by Visual Studio. You could create your own proxy layer of course, which would be very simple - but you'd need to update it every time you changed the web service.
If you have a look at the WSDL for your service, does that indicate the default values? It could also be that there's a switch somewhere in the generator to generate optional parameters or not (for compatibility with C# 3).
The out parameter is potentially a different matter entirely - what error are you getting?
I need to consume an external web service from my VB6 program. I want to be able to deploy my program without the SOAP toolkit, if possible, but that's not a requirement. I do not have the web service source and I didn't create it. It is a vendor-provided service.
So outside of the SOAP toolkit, what is the best way to consume a web service from VB6?
I use this function to get data from a web service.
Private Function HttpGetRequest(url As String) As DOMDocument
Dim req As XMLHTTP60
Set req = New XMLHTTP60
req.Open "GET", url, False
req.send ""
Dim resp As DOMDocument
If req.responseText <> vbNullString Then
Set resp = New DOMDocument60
resp.loadXML req.responseText
Else
Set resp = req.responseXML
End If
Set HttpGetRequest = resp
End Function
.NET has a good support for Web Services since day one, so you can develop your Web Service client logic in .NET as a .dll library/assembly and use it in VB6 app via COM Interop.
Assuming that you're running on Windows XP Professional or above, one interesting method is to use the SOAP moniker. Here's an example, lifted from some MSDN page. I don't know if this particular service works, but you get the idea...
set SoapObj = GetObject
("soap:wsdl=http://www.xmethods.net/sd/TemperatureService.wsdl")
WScript.Echo "Fairbanks Temperature = " & SoapObj.getTemp("99707")
This mechanism also works from VBScript. Which is nice.
Pocketsoap works very well. To generate your objects use the WSDL generator. Using this you don't have to parse anything yourself, plus everything is nice and strongly typed.
Check out this article by Scott Swigart on the MSDN VB 6.0 Resource Center.
Calling Web Services from Visual Basic 6, the Easy Way
I've had some measure of success so far using PocketSOAP to connect to the Salesforce API. I could not use the WSDL Wizard because it generates wrapper class filenames using the first 23 characters of the call names, and this results in duplicates. Nevertheless, PocketSOAP has been working well enough for me without the wizard, and it's much more straightforward than using XMLHTTP with DOMDocument.
I also looked into making a wrapper in .NET or using one of the "MS Office {MSO version} Web Services Toolkit" libraries, but there were significant deployment hassles with those options. PocketSOAP is a simple COM DLL, not dependent on some particular version of MS Office, and is licensed under MPL.
The SOAP toolkit is arguably the best you could get. Trying to do the same thing without it would require considerable extra effort. You need to have quite serious reasons to do that.
The format of the SOAP messages is not really easy to read or write manually and a third-party library is highly advised.