Question

I have a REST based WCF web-service;

The contract is:

[OperationContract]
[WebInvoke(Method = "POST", BodyStyle = WebMessageBodyStyle.Wrapped, ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Xml)]
string EchoWithPost(string message);

The message is:

public string EchoWithPost(string s)
{
    return "ECHO with POST : You said " + s;
}

I used the web channel factory to get a response via POST and it works. I used wireshark to tap the message and I can see some important things:

1) That xml is sent
2) The Content Type

From this I have constructed the following request logic:

        //5) manually post to the REST service
        //Create a request using a URL that can receive a post. 
        WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(urlOfService + "/rest/EchoWithPOST");
        // Set the Method property of the request to POST.
        request.Method = "POST";
        // Create POST data and convert it to a byte array.


        string postData = "<EchoWithPost xmlns="http://tempuri.org"><message>Hello</message><EchoWithPost>";



        byte[] byteArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(postData);
        // Set the ContentType property of the WebRequest.
        request.ContentType = "application/xml";
        // Set the ContentLength property of the WebRequest.
        request.ContentLength = byteArray.Length;
        // Get the request stream.
        Stream dataStream = request.GetRequestStream();
        // Write the data to the request stream.
        dataStream.Write(byteArray, 0, byteArray.Length);
        // Close the Stream object.
        dataStream.Close();
        // Get the response.
        WebResponse response = request.GetResponse();
        // Display the status.
        Console.WriteLine(((HttpWebResponse)response).StatusDescription);
        // Get the stream containing content returned by the server.
        dataStream = response.GetResponseStream();
        // Open the stream using a StreamReader for easy access.
        StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(dataStream);
        // Read the content.
        string responseFromServer = reader.ReadToEnd();
        // Display the content.
        Console.WriteLine(responseFromServer);
        // Clean up the streams.
        reader.Close();
        dataStream.Close();
        response.Close();

However when I hit the line that says:

dataStream =
response.GetResponseStream();

I get the following error:

“The remote server returned an error : (400) Bad Request”

Could someone help me with what I need to do as I need to be able to tell people how to manually create a POST request to interact with this REST based service.

Any help much appreciated dont really see what else I can try.

Answer 1

I’ve made a few small changes, so I’ll just post the entire thing. Hopefully it works for you. Also, I didn’t add any deserializing, figuring you could tackle that as long as you make it past the HTTP 400 error.

A great tool to help you debug these situations is SoapUI. Just setup a “Web TestCase”, and you can create your own POST requests and monitor the data that’s going back and forth.

-Vito

Interface:

    [OperationContract]
    [WebInvoke(UriTemplate = "EchoWithPost", Method="POST", BodyStyle = WebMessageBodyStyle.Wrapped, RequestFormat = WebMessageFormat.Xml, ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Xml)]
    string EchoWithPost(string message);

Service:

    public string EchoWithPost(string s)
    {
        return "ECHO with POST : You said " + s;
    }

Client:

string urlOfService = "http://somewhere.com/RestService.svc/EchoWithPost";
string postData = "<EchoWithPost xmlns=\"http://tempuri.org/\"><message>Vito</message></EchoWithPost>";
byte[] byteArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(postData);

WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(urlOfService);
request.Method = "POST";
request.ContentType = "application/xml;";
request.ContentLength = byteArray.Length;
Stream dataStream = request.GetRequestStream();
dataStream.Write(byteArray, 0, byteArray.Length);
dataStream.Close();

WebResponse webResponse = request.GetResponse();

// Output raw string result
string rawStringResult = new StreamReader(webResponse.GetResponseStream()).ReadToEnd();
HttpContext.Current.Response.Write("\r\n" + rawStringResult);

web.config: