Develop Reference

Implementing a SOAP web service

I have a WSDL definition for a SOAP service and I have successfully generated *.cs file from it using SvcUtil.
Implementing client is quite straightforward - I just need to call the necessary functions from the generated *.cs and that's it.
Implementing server seems more complicated. As I understand I need to implement an interface from the generated *.cs and then use some magic to turn it into the web server.
But I don't need a new web server, I already have a web server written in C# which already has many functionality unrelated to the SOAP service that I need to implement. I don't want to create another web server but I want my SOAP service to be just a part of my existing application (server), that is my server can answer e.g. requests http://example.com/request1, http://example.com/request2 etc. and I want this SOAP service to be just http://example.com/request3.
Since HTTP is already handled by my server I don't need .NET to handle it for me, basically my server can accept client connections and call the necessary handler based on the URL. I have a handler for SOAP request which looks approximately like this:
MyResponse HandleSOAPRequest(MyRequest request)
{
// 1. parse soap message from request.body
// 2. process it
// 3. generate response, serialize it in SOAP format and return it
}
The question is - can I rely on WSDL definition and .NET libraries to do it?
Currently I'm parsing SOAP request using XDocument and manually extract fields from it and serialize using simple string concatenation. Using .NET built-in functions to serialize or parse XML doesn't work. That is if I try to serialize response from an object of the class defined in the generated *.cs file then produced XML is different from what is expected by the protocol, similarly, if I try to parse request as an object of the class defined in the generated *.cs file I get error because XML parser expects different format. This applies to both the SoapFormatter and XmlSerializer.
Since .NET can implement client this means that everything that is necessary to parse and serialize SOAP messages is already implemented, I just need to figure out a way how to use this functionality.
The documentation for ServiceModel wasn't very helpful.

The easiest way would be to start the service via the ServiceHost:
ServiceHost host = new ServiceHost(typeof(YourService));
host.Open();
(I assumed here the configuration will come from the app.config and will not be setup in code like in the linked example below.)
How to: Expose a Contract to SOAP and Web Clients
The only drawback of this is that the application has to run with admin rights or otherwise a weird cofiguration is necessary.

Where is the instance of a WCF object stored?

I'm going to be creating a service that needs to make a call to a hosted WCF service halfway around the world. This isn't that big of a deal since the number of transactions that will be made is relatively low. However, I need to pass in an instance of a class that will possibly be defined in the WCF to the necessary WCF function.
So my question is, will that instance of the class exist on my server? Or will I be contacting the host server every time I attempt to set a variable in the object?
EXAMPLE:`
public class Dog
{
public string noise;
public int numLegs;
}
public class doSomething
{
public string makeNoise(Dog x)
{
return x.noise;
}
}
`
All of those are defined in the WCF. So when I create an instance of class Dog locally, will that instance exist on my side or the server hosting the WCF service? If I'm setting 1000 instances of Dog, the latency will definitely build up. Whereas if I DON'T have to contact the server every time I make a change to my instance of Dog, then the only time I have to worry about latency is when I pass it into doSomething.makeNoise.

The host creates a new instance of the service class for each request, if you're using the default per-call instantiation method (which is the recommended way).
So either this is the IIS server which hosting your WCF service that creates an instance of your service class, or it is the ServiceHost instance that you've created inside your own self-hosting setup (a console app, a Windows service etc.).
The service class instance is used to handle your request - execute the appropriate method on the service class, send back any results - and then it's disposed again.
There's also the per-session mode in which case (assuming the binding you've chosen support sessions) your first call will create a service-class instance, and then your subsequent calls will go to the same, already created instance (until timeouts come into play etc.).
And there's also the singleton mode, where you have a single instance of the service class that handles all requests - this is however rather tricky to get right in terms of programming, and "challenged" in terms of scalability and performance

You will need to host your WCF service on a public available server (for example IIS). Successful hosting will provide you with a link for the svc file. Clicking on that will give you a link ending in singleWsdl. You need to copy that link. On your client side, the one that requires a reference to the WCF, you will need to Add Service Reference and pass that link. This will generate proxy code with Client objects that you can use to access your WCF ServiceOperation methods.

At a minimum you should have three projects. A website project to host the actual site. A WCF project to host your services. And finally a shared project, which should contain the classes you are concerned with (the models).
Both the website and wcf projects should reference the shared project, this way they both know how the models look.
The wcf project should return serialzed models as json objects, which I usually do by referencing Newtonsoft.Json.
Your website project should expect this json, and deserialize them, also using Newtonsoft.Json. This is why your class (model) should exist in the shared project, so you can use the same class on both sides of your service call.

Error when trying to add a Service Reference

I´m trying to create a client in C# to a web service which (I suppose) is written in Java. It´s my first time trying to write a client, so I´m following the instructions on MSDN, but I´m stuck on a problem with Add Reference. When I open the Add Service Reference dialog and add the URL, an error occurs:
There was an error downloading 'http://geoportal.cuzk.cz/WCTService/WCTService.svc'.
The request failed with HTTP status 404: Not Found.
Metadata contains a reference that cannot be resolved: 'http://geoportal.cuzk.cz/WCTService/WCTService.svc'.
There was no endpoint listening at http://geoportal.cuzk.cz/WCTService/WCTService.svc that could accept the message. This is often caused by an incorrect address or SOAP action. See InnerException, if present, for more details.
The remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found.
If the service is defined in the current solution, try building the solution and adding the service reference again.
What should my next step be? I don´t know what I should do with this!
(It is a coordinates-transformation service from the Czech Republic.)
For more information:
Property services (GetCapabilities)
http://geoportal.cuzk.cz/WCTService/WCTService.svc/get?
Localization services:
http://geoportal.cuzk.cz/WCTService/WCTService.svc/get?request=GetCapabilities&service=WCTS

I was facing a similar situation in which I had created a WCF Service (Employee.svc) and later changed the named to EmployeeService.svc. WCF project compiled just fine but when I was trying to add service reference from by UI Client, I was getting following error:
Metadata contains a reference that cannot be resolved: 'http://localhost:2278/EmployeeService.svc?wsdl'.
The document format is not recognized (the content type is 'text/html; charset=UTF-8').
Metadata contains a reference that cannot be resolved: 'http://localhost:2278/EmployeeService.svc'.
There was no endpoint listening at 'http://localhost:2278/EmployeeService.svc' that could accept the message. This is often caused by an incorrect address or SOAP action. See InnerException, if present, for more details.
The remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found.
If the service is defined in the current solution, try building the solution and adding the service reference again.
I resolved it by replacing the correct service class name everywhere. In my case, it should have been EmployeeService and NOT employee. The left out place was in the markup code of svc file:
<%# ServiceHost Language="C#" Debug="true" Service="WCFServiceHost.**Employee**" CodeBehind="EmployeeService.svc.cs" %>
Changed it to
<%# ServiceHost Language="C#" Debug="true" Service="WCFServiceHost.**EmployeeService**" CodeBehind="EmployeeService.svc.cs" %>
And it started working again!!! Dont forget to build your WCF project after changing the service name.

I tried browsing to http://geoportal.cuzk.cz/WCTService/WCTService.svc?wsdl. It looks like this service is not exposing metadata.
I did a bit of googling on OpenGIS, and I think you need to have a look at this article:
OpenGIS with .NET
You won't be able to just add a service reference and go. It looks like you need to craft a concrete WSDL.
There may be a client-side library you can use / customize to assist with integration. Have a look at Stack Overflow question Using MySQL GeoSpatial data types in .NET.

I know this is an old thread and has already been resolved, but I just finished troubleshooting this exact issue, and none of the resolutions presented here worked for me. Wanted to share my resolution in case anyone else runs into this thread with a similar issue.
My ENTIRE issue stemmed from a bad Refactor->Rename operation. I recently purchased Resharper for my dev team and Resharper did not like the name of our service implementation name. We had named it "WCFAccess" and Resharper wanted the name "WcfAccess". I had just published an update, had the release safely isolated in its own release branch in git, and figured this was a good time to perform a rename on the develop branch and shut Resharper up about the naming. I used Refactor->Rename to change the name of the file to match the naming convention we had defined in the Resharper configuration. The rename operation completed, the solution compiled and ran, time goes on and the WCF rename was forgotten.
Fast forward a couple weeks, and its time to deploy out web services to the test environment for regression testing. The solution compiled successfully, published successfully, then gave me the EXACT error that the OP posted. What I ended up finding out is that the Rename operation from weeks ago ONLY UPDATED SOURCE CODE REFERENCES to the old name and did not rename MARKUP. When I navigated out to our web server where the service was published to and double clicked on the .svc file, it opened the markup in Visual Studio and I noticed that the character casing of the CodeBehind="ServiceNameHere.svc.vb" was inconstant with the new naming convention. Updating the markup and web.config files to reference the correct character casing resolved my issue.
I hope this helps someone. It was incredibly frustrating to troubleshoot
(Please don't hate me for using VB.Net, I inherited this application) :-)

Is the service definitely up and running before you try to add a service reference? If it exposes meta data, does it have a service behaviour or equivalent configured? Have you configured your firewall correctly?

While adding service reference to the client application, metadata is not accessible from service to client application. hence The remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found. Actually we can host the WCF service as follows:
Self hosting(console application)
IIS Hosting
WAS Hosting
window service hosting.
if you are using self hosting then you need to host the service in console application and run the service(run the console application) and then add the service reference to the client application, then metadata would be exchange. If service is not running then while adding service reference to the client application then 404 not found error would be getting. Same process would follow for all the hosting type. first run the service then add service reference.

I had the same problem happen to me earlier today. The webservice was running fine on local host but for some reason, I was having a 400 when trying to add the service reference in another project.
My error was caused by setting the [DataMember] annotation instead of the [EnumMember] annotation on an enum of the service. Changing it solved my issue.

The webservices doesn't run.
If you don't have access to the server where this service run, you're blocked.
Otherwise, you need to check if the server run, etc. As I don't know how the Java webservice is run, I can't help you further.

Magento Go C# requesting API fails to initialize

I am trying to connect to Magento API using C#. I am using Magento Go service and from what I've read I am able to use their API - I hope I am not wrong here. So here is what I did:
I added a Service Reference to http://mydomain.gostorego.com/api/v2_soap?wsdl=1, and just adding a service worked fine. Now I created a test class with GetStuff() method, which looks like this:
using ww.Feeds.MagnetoGoService;
public static string GetStuff()
{
MagnetoGoService.Mage_Api_Model_Server_V2_HandlerPortTypeClient s = new MagnetoGoService.Mage_Api_Model_Server_V2_HandlerPortTypeClient();
var login = s.login("username here", "key here");
return login.ToString();
}
When I run the program I get an error in first line saying:
Could not find default endpoint element that references contract 'MagnetoGoService.Mage_Api_Model_Server_V2_HandlerPortType' in the ServiceModel client configuration section. This might be because no configuration file was found for your application, or because no endpoint element matching this contract could be found in the client element.
Any ideas what this may be? Do I have to set something up in my Magento Go settings? Or maybe using Magento Go is not allowing API access?
Thanks a lot.

Forget SOAP with c# you will pull your hair out. Download Charls Cook's xml-rpc api libary for c# and use the xml-rpc method. You won't get all the snazzy intellisense but at least it will work. There's also c# solution from ez.newsletter they released with Cook's library demonstrating how to use 80% of the magento api calls.
Cook's library xml-rpc.net
http://www.xml-rpc.net/
ez.newsletter solution
http://code.google.com/p/csharlibformagexmlrpcapi/

If anyone ever has problems with this, my solution was this:
I used the reference in one project, but I actually called the class and had main program in another project. You need your Service reference to be in each project wherever you're using it. That fixed it! Alternatively you can create a new BasicHttpBinding() and putt all the options from app.config/web.config into that binder, then you don't need to reference to Service everywhere. I hope that helps!

I am trying to consume a PHP SOAP service from C# and create a class wrapper in VS 2010

I've been tasked with creating a class wrapper for a SOAP service, the idea is that you'll be able to treat it as a regular class. The main reason for this is that the WDSL for the SOAP service contains only one method and it's got 5 parameters and it's only kind of OO so you'd have to know all the method calls really well and it's a bit hard to remember them all.
OK, so I've tried adding a web reference, now web references can now be added as service references in VS 2010. You click add service reference advanced etc and it puts in a service reference. Great. Unfortunately if I try and access this from a class I can't.
I can build a console app and put code in the main procedure and access the method of the SOAP service fine but when I add a reference to a class library the intellisense won't allow me to select anything. I'd instantiate an instance like so:
SOAPService.webServiceService ws = new SOAPService.webserviceService();
ws.
and then the intellisense refuses to kick in. If I do the same in a web project or a console app then I can access it fine. I've added the namespace I've done all kinds of things. Also, I can add a web reference and get a DISCO file whenever I create a web project.
OK, also while I'm on the subject I also need to pass credentials to the web service in PHP.
The problem is that in the past I'd create some .net system credentials and add these and it would usually pass through if I was connecting to another .net service.
How should I be sending them to a PHP web service? I always get either invalid username/password combo errors or envelope malformatted error types
Thanks
Mr. B

So the intellisense is not working, but if you add the method in and try to use it does it work, or produce an error?
With regard to diagnosing authentication issues try using fiddler to view the SOAP messages that are being sent, and to view the reply. Do you have some other software that connects and authenticates to that service? Use fiddler to look at the SOAP messages and compare them to see if the header is different etc.
I'd normally do it like this,
using (Service service = new Service())
{
service.ClientCredentials.Windows.ClientCredential.Domain = "domain";
service.ClientCredentials.Windows.ClientCredential.Password = "password";
service.ClientCredentials.Windows.ClientCredential.UserName = "username";
}
Also with regard to the service working or not in general use fiddler if you have any problems, you can see the SOAP messages and it often gives you a clearer message.
I know in IIS you can turn on failed request handling that also gives you an insight from what is going on at the server end, perhaps you have some form of logging too for your php service?