Pass parameter as an object[]

Question

I wish to use this API with a c# application: http://www.affjet.com/2012/11/26/4-4-affjet-api/#more-3099

After adding the wsdl to my projcet i wrote this simple code : (getTransactions gets a object[] @params and returns a string)

Ws_ApiService service = new Ws_ApiService();
string apiKey = "*************";
var response = service.getTransactions(new object[] { apiKey });

i tried few more ways but couldnt get a right response, i tried :

var response = service.getTransactions(new object[] { "apiKey:****"});

and

var response = service.getTransactions(new object[] { "apiKey","******"});

Here is the php code that does the same from their docs :

<?php

$nameSpace = "https://secure.affjet.com/ws/api";

//Creating AffJet client for SOAP
$client = new SoapClient($nameSpace."?wsdl");

$pageNumber = 0;
//Setting up parameters
$params = array();
$params["apiKey"] = "MY_API_KEY";
//Value for parameters (optional)
//$params["networkId"] = array(1,2);
//$params["pageNumber"] = 0;
//$params["pageSize"] = 10;
//Making Request
$response = $client->getNetworks($params);
//XML to SimpleXMLElement Object
$xmlResponse = new SimpleXMLElement($response);
if ($xmlResponse->success == "true"){
    while (isset($xmlResponse->dataList->data)) {
        //Iterate the results
        foreach ($xmlResponse->dataList->data as $data){
            var_dump(xml2array($data));
        }
        //Requesting next page of data
        $pageNumber++;
        $params["pageNumber"] = $pageNumber;
        //Making Request
        $response = $client->getNetworks($params);
        //XML to SimpleXMLElement Object
        $xmlResponse = new SimpleXMLElement($response);
    }
} else {
    //Error somewhere
    echo $xmlResponse->errorMessage;
}

/**
* Transforms the object SimpleXmlElement into an array, easier to handle
*/
function xml2array($xml) {
    $arr = array();
    foreach ($xml as $element) {
        $tag = $element->getName();
        $e = get_object_vars($element);
        if (!empty($e)) {
            $arr[$tag] = $element instanceof SimpleXMLElement ? xml2array($element) : $e;
        } else {
            $arr[$tag] = trim($element);
        }
    }
    return $arr;
}


?>

this was the response for what i tried :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
    xmlns:ns1="http://secure.affjet.com/ws/api"
    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:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">
    <SOAP-ENV:Body>
        <ns1:getTransactionsResponse>
        <return xsi:type="xsd:string">
            &lt;response&gt;&lt;success&gt;false&lt;/success&gt;&lt;errorMessage&gt;
            API Key not provided&lt;/errorMessage&gt;&lt;dataList&gt;
            &lt;/dataList&gt;&lt;/response&gt;
        </return>
        </ns1:getTransactionsResponse>
    </SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>

you can see :

API Key not provided

And the response should be something like this:

<response>
    <success>true</success>
    <errorMessage></errorMessage>
    <dataList>
        <data>
            <date>2012-11-05 15:02:41</date>//Transaction Date
            <amount>81.67</amount>
            <commission>15.86</commission>
            <status>confirmed</status>//Status, could be: declined, pending, confirmed or paid
            <clickDate></clickDate>
            <ip></ip>
            <custom_id>MyCustomId</custom_id>//Custom Id for the transactions (SID, SubId,clickRef....)
            <unique_id>2548462</unique_id>//Unique Id given from the network to this transaction
            <merchantId>1</merchantId>//Id for the Merchant on AffJet
            <networkId>1</networkId>//Id for the Network on AffJet
        </data>
    </dataList>
</response>

all i need to supply is a parameter named "apiKey" and its value

EDIT :

after contacting their support, they said the request should look like this :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
                   xmlns:ns1="http://secure.affjet.com/ws/api" 
                   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
                   xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" 
                   xmlns:ns2="http://xml.apache.org/xml-soap" 
                   xmlns:SOAP- ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" 
            SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">
    <SOAP-ENV:Body>
        <ns1:getTransactions>
            <params xsi:type="ns2:Map">
                <item>
                    <key xsi:type="xsd:string">apiKey</key>
                    <value xsi:type="xsd:string">YOURAPIKEY</value>
                </item>
            </params>
        </ns1:getTransactions>
    </SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>

Any ideas ?

Answer 1

I dug a little deeper into this fascinating topic and have to say that working with what amounts to an associative array is just a pain in the .NET SOAP implementation. An associative array is represented as an IDictionary (e.g. Hashtable) – but refuses to be serialized (try it!).

The below code is the closest I could get – and for some reason (bug?) it does not work on the .NET framework, but does work on Mono.

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Schema;
using System.Xml.Serialization;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;

public class Test
{
  /*
   *  as per http://stackoverflow.com/a/1072815/2348103
   */
  public class Item
  {
    [XmlElement(Form = XmlSchemaForm.Unqualified)]
    public string key;

    [XmlElement(Form = XmlSchemaForm.Unqualified)]
    public string value;
  }

  [SoapType(TypeName = "Map", Namespace = "http://xml.apache.org/xml-soap")]
  public class Map : List<Item>
  {
  }

  public static void Main()
  {
    Map map = new Map();
    map.Add( new Item { key="foo", value="bar" } );
    map.Add( new Item { key="quux", value="barf" } );

    XmlTypeMapping mapping = 
         (new SoapReflectionImporter()).ImportTypeMapping( map.GetType() );
    XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer( mapping );
    XmlTextWriter writer = new XmlTextWriter( System.Console.Out );
    writer.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;
    writer.WriteStartElement( "root" );
    serializer.Serialize( writer, map );
    writer.WriteEndElement();
    writer.Close();
  }
}

/*
  // 
  // does not work - but see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc164135.aspx
  // 
  public class Map : IXmlSerializable
  {
    const string NS = "http://xml.apache.org/xml-soap";
    public IDictionary dictionary;
    public Map()
    {
      dictionary = new Hashtable();
    }

    public Map(IDictionary dictionary)
    {
      this.dictionary = dictionary;
    }

    public void WriteXml(XmlWriter w)
    {
      w.WriteStartElement("Map", NS);
      foreach (object key in dictionary.Keys)
      {
        object value = dictionary[key];
        w.WriteStartElement("item", NS);
        w.WriteElementString("key", NS, key.ToString());
        w.WriteElementString("value", NS, value.ToString());
        w.WriteEndElement();
      }
      w.WriteEndElement();
    }

    public void ReadXml(XmlReader r)
    {
      r.Read(); // move past container
      r.ReadStartElement("dictionary");
      while (r.NodeType != XmlNodeType.EndElement)
      {
        r.ReadStartElement("item", NS);
        string key = r.ReadElementString("key", NS);
        string value = r.ReadElementString("value", NS);
        r.ReadEndElement();
        r.MoveToContent();
        dictionary.Add(key, value);
      }
    }
    public System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchema GetSchema() { return null; }
  }
*/

Sample output from Mono:

<q1:Map xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" id="id1" d2p1:arrayType="Item[2]" xmlns:d2p1="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:q1="http://xml.apache.org/xml-soap">
  <Item href="#id2" />
  <Item href="#id3" />
</q1:Map>
[...]

Sample output from .NET:

<q1:Array xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" id="id1" q1:arrayType="Item[2]" xmlns:q1="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">
  <Item href="#id2" />
  <Item href="#id3" />
</q1:Array>
[...]