How to access a PHP Web Service from ASP.Net?

Question

I am trying use a web service in a C# ASP.Net Web Application. The service is built in PHP and is located on some remote server not under my control so I cant modify it to add meta data or something else into it.

When I use the "Add Web Reference" option in Visual Studio 2008, I receive the following error:

The HTML document does not contain Web service discovery information.

while trying to add the following web service.

https://subreg.forpsi.com/robot2/subreg_command.php?wsdl

The web service functions are exposed and displayed in Visual Studio 2008. however i could not add the reference to it for use in ASP.Net Application.

t3Service" Description

Methods __construct ( )

create_contact ( )

get_contact ( )

get_domain_info ( )

get_last_error_code ( )

get_last_error_msg ( )

get_NSSET ( )

get_owner_mail ( )

login ( )

register_domain ( )

register_domain_with_admin_contacts ( )

renew_domain ( )

request_sendmail ( )

send_auth_info ( )

transfer_domain ( )

2. I also tried the wsdl.exe method by retrieving the xml and copying it to a wsdl file and generating a proxy class. But the wsdl output contains warnings and the proxy class generated skips the exposed functions and generates something like this:

   // CODEGEN: The operation binding 'create_contact' from namespace 'urn:t3' was ignored. Each message part in an use=encoded message must specify a type. // CODEGEN: The operation binding 'get_contact' from namespace 'urn:t3' was ignored. Each message part in an use=encoded message must specify a type. // CODEGEN: The operation binding 'get_domain_info' from namespace 'urn:t3' was ignored. Each message part in an use=encoded message must specify a type. // CODEGEN: The operation binding 'get_last_error_code' from namespace 'urn:t3' was ignored. Each message part in an use=encoded message must specify a type. // CODEGEN: The operation binding 'get_last_error_msg' from namespace 'urn:t3' was ignored. Each message part in an use=encoded message must specify a type. // CODEGEN: The operation binding 'get_NSSET' from namespace 'urn:t3' was ignored. Each message part in an use=encoded message must specify a type. // CODEGEN: The operation binding 'get_owner_mail' from namespace 'urn:t3' was ignored. Each message part in an use=encoded message must specify a type. // CODEGEN: The operation binding 'send_auth_info' from namespace 'urn:t3' was ignored. Each message part in an use=encoded message must specify a type. // CODEGEN: The operation binding 'transfer_domain' from namespace 'urn:t3' was ignored. Each message part in an use=encoded message must specify a type. // CODEGEN: The operation binding 'request_sendmail' from namespace 'urn:t3' was ignored. Each message part in an use=encoded message must specify a type. // CODEGEN: The operation binding 'login' from namespace 'urn:t3' was ignored. Each message part in an use=encoded message must specify a type. // CODEGEN: The operation binding 'register_domain' from namespace 'urn:t3' was ignored. Each message part in an use=encoded message must specify a type. // CODEGEN: The operation binding 'register_domain_with_admin_contacts' from namespace 'urn:t3' was ignored. Each message part in an use=encoded message must specify a type. // CODEGEN: The operation binding 'renew_domain' from namespace 'urn:t3' was ignored. Each message part in an use=encoded message must specify a type.

Edit:

I tried this piece of code for my hand coded class.

public String makeWebRequest(String methodName)
        {
              // Create the web request  
              HttpWebRequest request = WebRequest.Create("https://subreg.forpsi.com/robot2/subreg_command.php/") as HttpWebRequest;  
              // Add authentication to request  
              request.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("[email protected]", "bar");
              request.Method = "POST";
              request.ContentType = "text/xml";
              request.Headers.Add("SOAPAction: https://subreg.forpsi.com/robot2/subreg_command.php/" + methodName);

            // Get response  
          using (HttpWebResponse response = request.GetResponse() as HttpWebResponse)  
             {  
               // Get the response stream  
               StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream());  
               // Console application output  
               //Console.WriteLine(reader.ReadToEnd());
               return reader.ReadToEnd();
             }  
        }

But when I try to get response then it returns

The remote server returned an error: (500) Internal Server Error.

Answer 1

As referenced that - you will have to hand code your "proxy" for this web service.

One example of manually making a web service call - you may have to tweak the method some.

private string MakeWebServiceCall(string methodName, string requestXmlString)
        {
            WebRequest webRequest = WebRequest.Create("https://subreg.forpsi.com/robot2/subreg_command.php");

            HttpWebRequest httpRequest = (HttpWebRequest)webRequest;
            httpRequest.Method = "POST";
            httpRequest.ContentType = "text/xml";
            httpRequest.Headers.Add("SOAPAction: https://subreg.forpsi.com/robot2/subreg_command.php/" + methodName);
            Stream requestStream = httpRequest.GetRequestStream();

            //Create Stream and Complete Request
            StreamWriter streamWriter = new StreamWriter(requestStream);
            streamWriter.Write(String.Format(this.GetSoapString(), requestXmlString));
            streamWriter.Close();

            //Get the Response
            WebResponse webResponse = httpRequest.GetResponse();
            Stream responseStream = webResponse.GetResponseStream();
            StreamReader streamReader = new StreamReader(responseStream);

            //Read the response into an xml document
            System.Xml.XmlDocument soapResonseXMLDocument = new System.Xml.XmlDocument();
            soapResonseXMLDocument.LoadXml(streamReader.ReadToEnd());

            //return only the xml representing the response details (inner request)
            return soapResonseXMLDocument.GetElementsByTagName(methodName + "Result")[0].InnerXml;
        }

I would recommend creating xsd's which can be used to generate objects (using xsd.exe) and then you can serialized/deserialize responses and requests to actually objects.

EDIT: GetSoapString() method

private string GetSoapString()
        {
            StringBuilder soapRequest = new StringBuilder("<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance\"");
            soapRequest.Append(" xmlns:xsd=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema\" ");
            soapRequest.Append("xmlns:soap=\"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/\"><soap:Body>");
            soapRequest.Append("{0}");
            soapRequest.Append("</soap:Body></soap:Envelope>");
            return soapRequest.ToString();
        }

For Steve's Reference

Call one looks like:

<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
               xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" 
               xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
<soap:Body>
<get_contact>
<id>123</id>
</get_contact>
</soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

Response:

<SOAP-ENV:Envelope SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:ns1="urn:t3" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">
   <SOAP-ENV:Body>
      <ns1:get_contactResponse>
         <get_contactReturn xsi:type="xsd:boolean">false</get_contactReturn>
      </ns1:get_contactResponse>
   </SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>