Just trying to wrap my head around SOAP vs REST. We currently have some asmx web services, mostly used between our own JavaScript and server code (not a public API). When I specify my method as a ScriptService and specify a ResponseFormat of Json, is it still considered just a SOAP service? It still doesn’t feel RESTful to me, but maybe thats because of the way my "resources" are designed (not well/fully represented by rest).
EDIT: Reading more I might be confusing the format (JSON vs XML) with the fact that most descriptions of the SOAP protocol tie in XML. For example, wikipedia states:
It relies on Extensible Markup
Language (XML) for its message format
To me logically that says if I’m using JSON I must not be using SOAP.
You define what kind of requests are made to you web service (asmx). Many protocols are allowed:
HTTP POST,
HTTP GET,
SOAP 1.1,
SOAP 1.2,
etc… OR you can block any of them.
When you call the web service with javascript you can use POST or GET. It doesn’t matter. The trick is what type of content you tell the service to return in these calls. You can tell the service to send you JSON or you can tell the service to send you XML.
When you create a service client in Visual Studio to connect to a ASMX service, Visual studio will try to access the WSDL for the service and the client will be in charge of generating the SOAP envelopes to communicate with the service and in this case you will send and receive XML because thats what the client and server have agreed to use to communicate.