Web service newbie… Please bear with me.
I was given a WSDL file to import into my vb .NET project. I understand that this is a contract which is supposed to tell me how to use the related web service. That’s where my problem comes in. I see all kinds of classes, properties, Interfaces, etc. in the imported service reference. Nothing telling me that “if you have X, Y, and Z as inputs call this function to return W”.
At the risk of sounding too vague, what is it that I should be looking for that tells me how I should be using this? How do I know which functions to call and from what classes to call them from? Should I expect some documentation to be provided with the WSDL or is the WSDL supposed to be enough for me to look at it and say “ahh, that’s how this is used!”.
I’ve read through the various WSDL tutorials out on the web and they gave me a basic understanding (I think…?). I’m missing something somewhere though and I’m really sure where.
Thank you for any assistance.
The WSDL will tell you or, perferably, a SOAP library how to communitcate with the SOAP server. A SOAP service can be an interface to get data for almost anything.
However, if the function names and parameters are not named well, it could be very vague what data you are to send to the SOAP service and what the response will be.
Most of the time, it should be documented. You should get those documents or learn what the service actually does from the service provider. The WSDL is not really meant to be for human consumption. Though, if you are writing your own XML, then yes, you’d need to pay attention to the WSDL. If a library is creating the XML for you, it usually works with the WSDL to find out how to structure the XML and read the response.