Calling Web Service without WSDL or Web Reference

Once I had to test in C# a dozen of web services developed by a third-party. However they provided no WSDL and no ASMX – therefore it would be impossible to use Web References. They only provided the name of the web methods, their urls, calling credentials and an XML request example.

• WSDL [FAIL]: I tried to obtain an wsdl by executing Visual Studio’s wsdl.exe but I got an error saying something like "The HTML document does not contain identifying information about the Web service."
• Service Reference [FAIL]: On Visual Studio, I tried adding a Service Reference, providing the web service’s url. I got an error downloading '<url>/_vti_bin/ListData.svc/$metadata'. Metadata contains a reference that cannot be resolved. Maybe the web service was an ASMX instead of a WCF?
• SOAP [almost WIN]: My last hope on cleaning this mess was SOAP (pun intended). Indeed, I tried creating a class based on the code available here. Sadly, when Visual Studio executed that class on IE11 I got a rather random HTTP Error 403.14 - Forbidden, the Web server is configured to not list the contents of this directory. However I was on the right track.

After all those attempts… what is the right way, on Visual Studio, to call an external web service, without WSDL, ASMX or adding a web reference?

Solution – SOAP Messages

Turns out SOAP was really the way to go. The execution flow I used was: create a Web/SOAP request, set request method to POST (for some reason the 3rd party developed the webservices that way), convert the XML containing the WebService input into a byte array (payload), write the XML payload into the web request, use the web request to get a response from the WebService, return an XML with the WebService response (or an error XML).

I had to call WebServices with an URL pattern of:

http://www.client.com/_ws/<METHOD_NAME>?sso=<AUTHENTICATION>&o=<GET/SET/DEL>.

For example: http://www.client.com/_ws/products?sso=PASSword123&o=GET

Here is the C# code to call a WebService, through its URL, using SOAP alone:

/// <returns>ResultCode, 1 if success.</returns>
private XmlDocument CallWebService(string method, string operation, string xmlPayload)
{
    string result = "";
    string CREDENTIALS = "PASSword123";
    string URL_ADDRESS = "http://www.client.com/_ws/" + method + "?sso=" + CREDENTIALS + "&o=" + operation +;  //TODO: customize to your needs
    // ===== You shoudn't need to edit the lines below =====

    // Create the web request
    HttpWebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(new Uri(URL_ADDRESS)) as HttpWebRequest;

    // Set type to POST
    request.Method = "POST";
    request.ContentType = "application/xml";

    // Create the data we want to send
    StringBuilder data = new StringBuilder();
    data.Append(xmlPayload);
    byte[] byteData = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(data.ToString());      // Create a byte array of the data we want to send
    request.ContentLength = byteData.Length;                        // Set the content length in the request headers

    // Write data to request
    using (Stream postStream = request.GetRequestStream())
    {
        postStream.Write(byteData, 0, byteData.Length);
    }

    // Get response and return it
    XmlDocument xmlResult = new XmlDocument();
    try
    {
        using (HttpWebResponse response = request.GetResponse() as HttpWebResponse)
        {
            StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream());
            result = reader.ReadToEnd();
            reader.Close();
        }
        xmlResult.LoadXml(result);
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
        xmlResult = CreateErrorXML(e.Message, "");  //TODO: returns an XML with the error message
    }
    return xmlResult;
}

There’s an even better way here.