How to call a web service with no wsdl in .net

Question

I have to connect to a third party web service that provides no wsdl nor asmx. The url of the service is just http://server/service.soap

I have read this article ab

Answer 1

I have created the following helper method to call WebService manually without any reference:

public static HttpStatusCode CallWebService(string webWebServiceUrl, 
                                            string webServiceNamespace, 
                                            string methodName, 
                                            Dictionary parameters, 
                                            out string responseText)
{
    const string soapTemplate = 
@"

  
    <{0} xmlns=""{1}"">
      {2}    
  
";

    var req = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(webWebServiceUrl);
    req.ContentType = "application/soap+xml;";
    req.Method = "POST";

    string parametersText;

    if (parameters != null && parameters.Count > 0)
    {
        var sb = new StringBuilder();
        foreach (var oneParameter in parameters)
            sb.AppendFormat("  <{0}>{1}\r\n", oneParameter.Key, oneParameter.Value);

        parametersText = sb.ToString();
    }
    else
    {
        parametersText = "";
    }

    string soapText = string.Format(soapTemplate, methodName, webServiceNamespace, parametersText);


    using (Stream stm = req.GetRequestStream())
    {
        using (var stmw = new StreamWriter(stm))
        {
            stmw.Write(soapText);
        }
    }

    var responseHttpStatusCode = HttpStatusCode.Unused;
    responseText = null;

    using (var response = (HttpWebResponse)req.GetResponse())
    {
        responseHttpStatusCode = response.StatusCode;

        if (responseHttpStatusCode == HttpStatusCode.OK)
        {
            int contentLength = (int)response.ContentLength;

            if (contentLength > 0)
            {
                int readBytes = 0;
                int bytesToRead = contentLength;
                byte[] resultBytes = new byte[contentLength];

                using (var responseStream = response.GetResponseStream())
                {
                    while (bytesToRead > 0)
                    {
                        // Read may return anything from 0 to 10. 
                        int actualBytesRead = responseStream.Read(resultBytes, readBytes, bytesToRead);

                        // The end of the file is reached. 
                        if (actualBytesRead == 0)
                            break;

                        readBytes += actualBytesRead;
                        bytesToRead -= actualBytesRead;
                    }

                    responseText = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(resultBytes);
                    //responseText = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(resultBytes);
                }
            }
        }
    }

    // standard responseText: 
    //
    //
    //    
    //        
    //            Hello
    //        
    //    
    //
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(responseText))
    {
        string responseElement = methodName + "Result>";
        int pos1 = responseText.IndexOf(responseElement);

        if (pos1 >= 0)
        {
            pos1 += responseElement.Length;
            int pos2 = responseText.IndexOf(" pos1)
                responseText = responseText.Substring(pos1, pos2 - pos1);
        }
        else
        {
            responseText = ""; // No result
        }
    }

    return responseHttpStatusCode;
}

You can then simply call any web service method with the following code:

var parameters = new Dictionary();
parameters.Add("name", "My Name Here");

string responseText;
var responseStatusCode = CallWebService("http://localhost/TestWebService.asmx", 
                                        "http://tempuri.org/", 
                                        "SayHello", 
                                        parameters, 
                                        out responseText);