Question

In C#, if I need to open an HTTP connection, download XML and get one value from the result, how would I do that?

For consistency, imagine the webservice is at http://www.webservice.com and that if you pass it the POST argument fXML=1 it gives you back

<xml><somekey>somevalue</somekey></xml> 

I’d like it to spit out ‘somevalue’.

Answer 1

I use this code and it works great:

System.Xml.XmlDocument xd = new System.Xml.XmlDocument; xd.Load('http://www.webservice.com/webservice?fXML=1'); string xPath = '/xml/somekey'; // this node's inner text contains 'somevalue' return xd.SelectSingleNode(xPath).InnerText; 

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EDIT: I just realized you’re talking about a webservice and not just plain XML. In your Visual Studio Solution, try right clicking on References in Solution Explorer and choose ‘Add a Web Reference’. A dialog will appear asking for a URL, you can just paste it in: ‘http://www.webservice.com/webservice.asmx‘. VS will autogenerate all the helpers you need. Then you can just call:

com.webservice.www.WebService ws = new com.webservice.www.WebService(); // this assumes your web method takes in the fXML as an integer attribute return ws.SomeWebMethod(1);