ASMX Returning a pure string

Question

I have an ASP.NET web service (.asmx). My service is defined like the following:

[System.Web.Services.WebService(Namespace = "http://tempuri.org/")]
[System.Web.Services.WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo = System.Web.Services.WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)]
public class MyService : System.Web.Services.WebService
{
  [System.Web.Services.WebMethod]
  public string GetResult()
  {
    string result = "";

    int day = System.DateTime.UtcNow.Day;
    if ((day % 1) == 1)
      result = "odd";
    else
      result = "even";
    return result;
  }
}

Currently, if I call this service method, I get the following result:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<string xmlns="http://tempuri.org/">even</string>

My issue is, I need to return just the string part. I do NOT want to return the wrapping XML. How do I do this with an .asmx?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Does it need to be an .asmx web service for this? I mean, by excluding the SOAP envelope you're essentially saying "this is not a SOAP web service" as it is, so why not take it a step further and make it a regular .aspx page instead of an .asmx web service.

As a page, what you're trying to do would be trivial. Remove all mark-up from the page, use Response.Headers to edit the response headers accordingly, Response.Write() to output your raw text, and Response.End() to close the response.

Answer 2

Use json

add the required attribute to your web service and your web method and you get what you want.

Web Service Attribute:[ScriptService]

Web Method Attribute:[ScriptMethod(ResponseFormat = ResponseFormat.Json)]

Read a sample Here