Question

For some reason my webservice does not like the data I’m sending it. I keep getting the following error:

System.InvalidOperationException: Request format is invalid: text/xml; charset=utf-8.

at System.Web.Services.Protocols.HttpServerProtocol.ReadParameters()
at System.Web.Services.Protocols.WebServiceHandler.CoreProcessRequest()

Any ideas?

Here’s my code:

$.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: "/wsCheckout.asmx/loginUser",
    data: "userName=" + userName + "&pw=" + pw,
    contentType: "text/xml; charset=utf-8",
    dataType: "xml",
    cache: false,
    beforeSend: function(n){ showLoading(); },
    complete: function(n){ hideLoading(); },
    success: function(r) {        
      if( checkResponse(r) == true ){ 
        closeBox(aspxIdPrefix + "login");
        hideBox(aspxIdPrefix + "login");        
        openBox("#shippingAddress");     
      }           
    } // end success
}); //end AJAX

[WebMethod(EnableSession = true)]
[System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptMethod(ResponseFormat = System.Web.Script.Services.ResponseFormat.Xml)]
public DataTable loginUser(string userName, string pw)
{
......
}

Answer 1

The data option is passing the parameters as querystring (GET) instead of post and the content-type needs to be application/json. Here’s the complete syntax.

$.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: "/wsCheckout.asmx/loginUser",
    data: "{userName:'" + userName + "',pw:'" + pw+"'}",
    contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
    dataType: "xml",
    cache: false,
    beforeSend: function(n){ showLoading(); },
    complete: function(n){ hideLoading(); },
    success: function(r) {        
      if( checkResponse(r) == true ){ 
        closeBox(aspxIdPrefix + "login");
        hideBox(aspxIdPrefix + "login");        
        openBox("#shippingAddress");     
      }           
    } // end success
});