Basically I am trying to make a generic client which will retrieve the Methods Names, Parameters that it takes and Parameter that it returns from the any kind of web service. I thought of parsing the WSDL xml for that, but in that the required information is scattered over different elements. then I saw the SOAP Envelopes which contains the exact information I need. so I thought of downloading the web service page and doing the series of string operations so that I get extract the data I need from particular tag. but I guess there might be any C# functions which can give me this data containing the Request and Response headers information.
Can anybody please guide me.
Thanks in advance.
The only valid approach is through WSDL because it is the only real description of the service. Those “help pages” are just a feature of ASMX. WCF for example doesn’t have this help page showing examples of SOAP messages. Also examples of SOAP messages don’t really cover the whole content of the message – it doesn’t correctly show which elements are mandatory and which are not. It doesn’t correctly show advanced features like XSD choices etc. If you want to write generic client you must parse WSDL. It is really BIG task. Also be aware that WSDL can reference other WSDLs and XSDs.
To make things much more easier you should check available classes in .NET framework to deal with service descriptions. For example
System.ServiceModel.Description.MetadataExchangeClientand other classes from that namespace.