This seems like a simple question, but I haven't been able to find the answer online via many Google searches. I have a C# web service and, when I visit its ASMX page in the browser, for a particular method it always has the following:
"The following is a sample SOAP 1.1 request and response. The placeholders shown need to be replaced with actual values."
Likewise for SOAP 1.2 and HTTP POST. What I want to know is how I replace the placeholders shown, which are things like:
<myParameter>string</myParameter>
Where 'string' is the placeholder. And in the response:
<xsd:schema>schema</xsd:schema>xml
Where 'schema' and 'xml' are the placeholders. I've been using another web service that has these placeholders filled out with example values for the parameters and responses, and I would like to define such examples for my own web methods, too. I was able to describe the entire method with the following:
[WebMethod(Description="Does awesome things.")]
But I have not found such a thing for the individual parameters of a web method.
By default DefaultWsdlHelpGenerator.aspx is called to generate the "help" page.
You can set another (or modified) template with the wsdlHelpGenerator Element in your web.config file.
Why would you want to do that? That page you see in the browser when hitting your asmx is just giving sample requests and reponses. If you want to get data using those examples, replace the placholder values in the request with what you are querying from the service, and POST to it...
Edit: I mean, if you really need to replace those placholder values, write code in your service to determine when someone does a GET (implying viewing from a browser), and play with the response, changing the placeholder values to whatever you require.
You can't do it. If the help page (which is what you're describing) does not have an input box for a particular parameter, then it means it doesn't know how to do that.
You should not pay too much attention to those pages in any case. They go away with WCF.
They were never of very much use anyway, except for the simplest web services. They were a way to get people into the web service game way back in the beginning when there were no tools to help you test a web service. Use soapUI instead.
BTW, also see Microsoft: ASMX Web Services are a “Legacy Technology” for why it makes good sense to ignore ASMX-only pages.
Related
So I've been working on an api that, using RESTful, allows the user to get data from a database. Pretty simple, URL is along the lines of local:port/projects/[id of project]. The api returns some xml with 4 or 5 results.
What I'm having trouble with is PUT. As far as I understand it, I should use the same url, but use the PUT request method, and include the data that I want sent in a parameter. The problem seems to be that when I run the PUT, it just returns the same data as a GET.
I'm using the following site to test this: wst dot mytechlabs dot com (won't let me post two links here;?)
The code for my controller is located here: http://pastebin.com/3HXXR4YY
Thanks in advance, I'll monitor this, so let me know if I forgot any info that would help.
Similar questions have been asked about the nature of when to use POST and when to use GET in an AJAX request
Here:
What are the advantages of using a GET request over a POST request?
and here: GET vs. POST ajax requests: When and how to use either?
However, I want to make it clear that that is not exactly what I am asking. I get idempotence, sensitive data, the ability for browsers to be able to try again in the event of an error, and the ability for the browser to be able to cache query string data.
My real scenario is such that I want to prevent my users from being able to simply enter in the URL to my "Compute.cshtml" file (i.e. the file on the server that my jQuery $.ajax function posts to).
I am in a WebMatrix C#.net web-pages environment and I have tried to precede the file name with an underscore (_), but apparently an AJAX request falls under the same criteria that this underscore was designed to prevent the display of and it, of course, breaks the request.
So if I use POST I can simply use this logic:
if (!IsPost) //if this is not a post...
{
Response.Redirect("~/") //...redirect back to home page.
}
If I use GET, I suppose I can send additional data like a string containing the value "AccessGranted" and check it on the other side to see if it equals this value and redirect if not, but this could be easily duplicated through typing in the address bar (not that the data is sensitive on the other side, but...).
Anyway, I suppose I am asking if it is okay to always use POST to handle this logic or what the appropriate way to handle my situation is in regards to using GET or POST with AJAX in a WebMatrix C#.net web-pages environment.
My advice is, don't try to stop them. It's harmless.
You won't have direct links to it, so it won't really come up. (You might want your robots.txt to exclude the whole /api directory, for Google's sake).
It is data they have access to anyway (otherwise you need server-side trimming), so you can't be exposing anything dangerous or sensitive.
The advantages in using GETs for GET-like requests are many, as you linked to (caching, semantics, etc)
So what's the harm in having that url be accessible via direct browser entry? They can POST directly too, if they're crafty enough, using Fiddler "compose" for example. And having the GETs be accessible via url is useful for debugging.
EDIT: See sites like http://www.robotstxt.org/orig.html for lots of details, but a robots.txt that excluded search engines from your web services directory called /api would look like this:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /api/
Similar to IsPost, you can use IsAjax to determine whether the request was initiated by the XmlHttpRequest object in most browsers.
if(!IsAjax){
Response.Redirect("~/WhatDoYouThinkYoureDoing.cshtml");
}
It checks the request to see if it has an X-Requested-With header with the value of XmlHttpRequest, or if there is an item in the Request object with the key X-Requested-With that has a value of XmlHttpRequest.
One way to detect a direct AJAX call is to check for the presence of the http_referer header. Directly typed URLs won't generate a referrer, but you still won't be able to differentiate the call from a simple anchor link.
(Just keep in mind that some browsers don't generate the header for XHR requests.)
I was thinking ,
The WebApi along with routing mechanism works in such way that it reads the http verb ( GET POST etc...) and then searches for matched method names / parameters :
For example :
If it's GET and the URI is api/Customers/5:
method should start with Get
if it has ID so search a method which accepts int as parameter.
etc. (there are more rules).
I mostly believe they did it using reflection.
Question :
Isn't it a performance hit , for every URI request - to search all this data just to attach a method ?
Where I could easily send a very short string from a client which will imply on the method on the server side ?
Why not doing it the simple way ? Ok cause we want to use http verbs as meaning. OK. but so much operations just to execute a method
example #1
get api/Customers/5
could be
a.ashx?m=gc&id=5 (method=GetCustomer & id=5)
example #2
put api/Customers/5?v=123
could be
a.ashx?m=uc&id=5?v=123' (method=UpdateCustomer & id=5 & value=123)
mine is even shorter.
Dont get me wrong. I believe this api was done by very smart people who knew what they talk about.
Just want o know what am I missing.
Web api has a lot of options that you don't have with HTTP Handler if you don't code it
Full list: http://www.asp.net/whitepapers/mvc4-release-notes#_Toc317096197
OData support (via Queryable attribute)
Content Negotiation
Filters
Model binding and validation
Ability to self host outside of IIS
Link generation to related resources that incorporates routing rules
Full support for routes/routing
Ability to create custom help and test pages using IApiExplorer
Performance comparison HttpHandler vs WebAPI: http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/2012/Sep/04/ASPNET-Frameworks-and-Raw-Throughput-Performance
As always, you need to choose the the technology that suits you best, if you want performance go with Http Handler. If you want flexibility and rest go with Web API. You might want rest if you expose web services that other will consume
I have a problem here. Assume there's a basic calculator implemented in javascript hosted on a website ( I have googled it and to find an example and found this one: http://www.unitsconverter.net/calculator/ ). What I want to do is make a program that opens this website, enters some value and gets the return value. So, in our website calculator, the program:
- open the website
- enters an operand
- enters an operation
- enters an operand
- retrieve the result
Note: things should be done without the need to show anything to the user ( the browser for example ).
I did some search and found about HttpWebRequest and HttpWebRespond. But I think those can be used to post data to the server, which means, The file I'm sending data to must be php, aspx or jsp. But Javascript is client side. So, I think they are kind of useless to me in this case.
Any help?
Update:
I have managed to develop the web bot using WebBrowser Control tool ( found in System.Windows.Forms )
Here's a sample of the code:
webBrowser1.Navigate("LinkOfTheSiteYouWant"); // this will load the page specified in the string. You can add webBrowser1.ScriptErrorsSuppressed = true; to disable the script in a page
webBrowser1.Document.GetElementById("ElementId").SetAttribute("HTMLattrbute", "valueToBeSet");
Those are the main methods I have used to do what I wanted to.
I have found this video useful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P2KvFN_aLY
I guess you could use something like WatiN to pipe the user's input/output from your app to the website and return the results, but as another commenter pointed out, the value of this sort of thing when you could just write your own calculator fairly escapes me.
You'll need a JavaScript interpreter (engine) to parse all the JavaScript code on the page.
https://www.google.com/search?q=c%23+javascript+engine
What you're looking for is something more akin to a web service. The page you provided doesn't seem like it accepts any data in an HTTP POST and doesn't have any meaningful information in the source that you could scrape. If for example you wanted to programmatically make searches for eBay auctions, you could figure out how to correctly post data to it eg:
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=http+for+dummies&_sacat=267&_odkw=http+for+dummies&_osacat=0
and then look through the http response for the information you're looking for. You'd probably need to create a regular expression to match the markup you're looking for like if you wanted to know how many results, you'd search the http response for this bit of markup:
<div class="alt w"><div class="cnt">Your search returned <b>0 items.</b></div></div>
As far as clientside/javascript stuff, you just plain aren't going to be able to do anything like what you're going for.
It is a matter of API: "Does the remote website expose any API for the required functionality?".
Well web resources that expose interactive API are called web service. There are tons of examples (Google Maps for istance).
You can access the API -depending on the Terms & Conditions of the service- through a client. The nature of the client depends on the kind of web service you are accessing.
A SOAP based service is based on SOAP protocol.
A REST based service is based on REST principles.
So, if there is an accessible web service called "Calculator", then you can access the service and, for istance, invoke the sum method.
In your example, the calculator is a Javascript implementation, so it is not a web service and it cannot be accessed via HTTP requests. Though, its implementation is still accessible: it is the javascript file where the calculator is implemented. You can always include the file in your website and access its functions via javascript (always mind terms and conditions!!).
A very common example is the jQuery library stored in Google Libraries.
Where can I find the RAW/object data of a SOAP request in C# when using WebServices.
Can't find it anywhere. Shouldent it be available in the HttpContext.Current.Request object ?
Shouldent it be available in the HttpContext.Current.Request object ?
No, it shouldn't.
What are you trying to accomplish? If you just want to see that data so you can log it, or as an aid to debugging, then see the example in the SoapExtension class. It's a working sample of an extension that can log input and output as XML. I've used a modified version of it myself.
If you're just looking to debug your web service, then you can install Fiddler, and that allows you to inspect the data sent to and from your web service.
It sounds like you're going to have to go lower level on your implementation if you want to see the raw XML. Check out the generic handler (ASHX extension). This will allow you to deal with the request/response streams directly. It's very low level, but gives you full control over the service lifecycle.
I found
Request.Params[null]
refers to the RAW data posted to the page in C# ASP.NET.