Testing a Web Service with a Browser
7.2 Testing a Web Service with a Browser
Web services deployed on ASP.NET can easily be tested with a web browser, because the ASP.NET framework itself includes the ability to generate browser screens based on the definition of the web service. For example, browsing to the .asmx file shown in Ex am ple 7- 1 using the URL http:localhostWebServicesHelloWebService.asmx produces the browser screen shown in Figur e 7- 1 . Figure 7-1. Browsing to a web service hosted in ASP.NET To test a web service in a web browser, the .asmx file must be deployed in an IIS virtual directory. Using the browser to view the .asmx file directly from disk doesnt work. The HelloWebService in large font in Figur e 7- 1 is the name of the web service exposed at the given URL. This is the name of the implementation class or the value given by the Name parameter of the WebService attribute, if present. Underneath the main heading there are two additional links. The first, marked Service Description, links to the WSDL description of the service. Web-service descriptions and WSDL are explained in the next section. The second, at the bottom of the test window, is the list of web methods exposed by the web service. In the case of HelloWebService, there is only a single method, SayHello. Clicking on the name of the method brings up a screen with information about that method and with a mechanism for testing it. The screen is shown in Figur e 7- 2 . Figure 7-2. The test screen for the SayHello web method 334 Near the top of the test screen for the SayHello web method is a place to enter a value for the methods single parameter, Name , and a button that invokes the method. At the bottom of the screen is a list of sample invocations and responses for the web method, in the protocols that ASP.NET understands. ASP.NET web services can be invoked using the SOAP, HTTP GET, or HTTP POST protocols. When youre developing clients on the .NET platform, none of this matters to you—.NET does the work of wrapping invocations in the appropriate SOAP messages. However, when youre calling a web service from a platform that doesnt have native support for writing web-service clients, this information can be very helpful. Additionally, the HTTP GET and HTTP POST protocols may be simpler to implement on platforms that dont provide SOAP support. These protocols wont be discussed further, however, because this book is about developing on the .NET platform. Clicking the Invoke button on the screen shown in Figur e 7- 2 invokes the web service using the HTTP GET protocol. The response is an XML document that encodes the result of the web-method invocation see Figur e 7- 3 . This is not a SOAP response. Rather, it is in the format used when responding to HTTP GET or HTTP POST invocations. It is sufficiently readable to see that the web method is performing as expected. Figure 7-3. The result of clicking the Invoke button in Figu r e 7 - 2 3357.3 Web-Service Descriptions
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» VB.NET - (O'Reilly) Programming Visual Basic NET
» What Is the Microsoft .NET Framework?
» hello, world An Example Visual Basic .NET Program
» Hello, Windows An Example Visual Basic .NET Program
» Hello, Browser An Example Visual Basic .NET Program
» Source Files Identifiers The Visual Basic .NET Language
» Numeric Literals String Literals Character Literals
» Date Literals Boolean Literals Nothing Summary of Literal Formats
» Custom Types Collections Types
» The Namespace Statement The Imports Statement
» Symbolic Constants Scope The Visual Basic .NET Language
» Access Modifiers Assignment The Visual Basic .NET Language
» Unary Operators Arithmetic Operators
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» Object Instantiation and New Constructors
» Handling Events Inheritance Classes
» Passing arrays as parameters
» Variable-length parameter lists Main method
» Implementing interface methods Overriding inherited methods
» Overloading Overloading inherited methods
» The MyBase Keyword Nested Classes Destructors
» Interfaces The Visual Basic .NET Language
» Enumerations The Visual Basic .NET Language
» Exceptions The Visual Basic .NET Language
» Delegates The Visual Basic .NET Language
» Using Events and Delegates Together
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» Summary The Visual Basic .NET Language
» Common Language Infrastructure CLI and Common Language Runtime CLR
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» Application Domains Common Language Specification CLS
» Intermediate Language IL and Just-In-Time JIT Compilation Metadata
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» Dispose Memory Management and Garbage Collection
» A Brief Tour of the .NET Framework Namespaces
» Configuration File Format Configuration
» Configuration Section Groups The appSettings Section
» Adding event handlers Creating a Form in Code
» Handling Form Events Windows Forms I: Developing Desktop Applications
» Relationships Between Forms Windows Forms I: Developing Desktop Applications
» Merging Menus MDI Applications
» Detecting MDI Child Window Activation
» Component Attributes Windows Forms I: Developing Desktop Applications
» The Graphics Class 2-D Graphics Programming with GDI+
» The Pen Class 2-D Graphics Programming with GDI+
» The Brush Class 2-D Graphics Programming with GDI+
» System colors The Color Structure
» Alpha Blending 2-D Graphics Programming with GDI+
» Antialiasing 2-D Graphics Programming with GDI+
» The PrintPageEventArgs Class Printing
» The OnBeginPrint and OnEndPrint Methods Choosing a Printer
» The PageSettings Class Printing
» The PrinterSettings Class Printing
» Page Setup Dialog Box Print Preview
» Summary Windows Forms I: Developing Desktop Applications
» The Button Class The CheckBox Class The ComboBox Class
» The DateTimePicker Class The GroupBox Class The ImageList Class
» The Label Class The LinkLabel Class
» The ListBox Class Common Controls and Components
» The ListBox.ObjectCollection Class
» The ListView Class Common Controls and Components
» The MonthCalendar Class Common Controls and Components
» The Panel Class The PictureBox Class
» The RadioButton Class Common Controls and Components
» The TextBox Class The Timer Class
» Other Controls and Components
» Control Events Windows Forms II: Controls, Common Dialog Boxes, and Menus
» The Anchor Property Form and Control Layout
» Controlling dock order The Dock Property
» The Splitter control The Dock Property
» ColorDialog FontDialog OpenFileDialog Common Dialog Boxes
» PageSetupDialog PrintDialog PrintPreviewDialog SaveFileDialog
» Adding Menus in the Visual Studio .NET Windows Forms Designer
» Programmatically Creating Menus Menus
» Building Controls from Other Controls
» Building Controls That Draw Themselves Building Nonrectangular Controls
» Summary Windows Forms II: Controls, Common Dialog Boxes, and Menus
» Setting control properties using attributes Adding event handlers
» AutoEventWireup Handling Page Events
» The Button control Web Controls
» The CheckBox control The DropDownList control
» The Image control The Label control
» The ListBox control Web Controls
» The RadioButton control Web Controls
» The Table control Web Controls
» The TextBox control Web Controls
» Other web controls Web Controls
» HTML Controls Handling Control Events
» Programmatically Instantiating Controls More About Server Controls
» More About Validation-Control Tag Attributes
» Using Validation-Control Properties Providing a Summary View of Validation Failures
» Performing Custom Validation Adding Validation
» Using Directives to Modify Web Page Compilation
» The Server Object ASP.NET Objects: Interacting with the Framework
» The Application Object The Session Object The Cache Object The Request Object
» The Response Object ASP.NET Objects: Interacting with the Framework
» Discovering Browser Capabilities ASP.NET and Web Forms: Developing Browser-Based Applications
» The Session Object Maintaining State
» The Application Object Maintaining State
» Session and Application Startup and Shutdown global.asax Compiles to a Class
» Adding Global Objects Application-Level Code and global.asax
» ASP.NET authorization Authorization
» Windows NTFS authorization Code-access authorization
» IUSR_ComputerName Impersonation Accessing Network Resources
» User Controls Designing Custom Controls
» Creating a custom server control using Visual Studio .NET
» Creating a custom server control in code Using a custom server control in Visual Studio .NET
» Summary ASP.NET and Web Forms: Developing Browser-Based Applications
» The WebService Attribute The WebMethod Attribute
» Testing a Web Service with a Browser
» Consuming a Web Service in Visual Studio .NET
» Consuming a Web Service in Notepad
» Synchronous Versus Asynchronous Calls
» Web-Service Descriptions Web-Service Discovery
» Limitations of Web Services Summary
» A Brief History of Universal Data Access Managed Providers
» Connecting to a SQL Server Database
» Connecting to an OLE DB Data Source
» The DataSet Class Finding Tables
» Finding Column Values Finding Column Definitions Changing, Adding, and Deleting Rows
» Writing Updates Back to the Data Source
» Relations Between DataTables in a DataSet
» The DataSets XML Capabilities
» Binding a DataSet to a Windows Forms DataGrid
» Binding a DataSet to a Web Forms DataGrid
» Typed DataSets ADO.NET: Developing Database Applications
» Reading Data Using a DataReader
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