Posting data from a web service to a web page

Writing and consuming web services is one of the important things we do at work. Systems running a variety of operating systems and with a completely different set of configurations make it difficult to exchange data easily. Things get even worse when there is a difference in time zones. We really didn’t want to wait for our integration partner to come back to us with a feedback whether they received the data or not. We rather decided to take ‘just-try-it” approach to post (HTTP-POST) web service data to a web page on localhost and it worked. I know it is not a rocket science, but it saved me time and effort, so I thought of sharing it.

So, this is what we do to send data to a web service:

Try

      stream = File.OpenText( "C:\ServiceData.xml" )
      strXML = stream.ReadToEnd()
      stream.Close()

      webreq = HttpWebRequest.Create("{Web-Service-Uri}")
      webreq.Method = "POST"
      webreq.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"

      strXML = "data=" & HttpUtility.UrlEncode(strXML)
      bytes = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(strXML)
      webreq.ContentLength = bytes.Length

      requestStream = webreq.GetRequestStream()
      requestStream.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length)
      requestStream.Close()

      webResponse = webreq.GetResponse()
      responseStream = New IO.StreamReader(webResponse.GetResponseStream())
      responseStream.Close()
      webResponse.Close()
      webreq = Nothing

Catch ex As System.Net.WebException

     Dim responseFromServer As [String] = ex.Message.ToString() & " "
     If ex.Response IsNot Nothing Then
            Using response As Net.WebResponse = ex.Response
            Dim data As Stream = response.GetResponseStream()
                  Using reader As New StreamReader(data)
                         responseFromServer += reader.ReadToEnd()                        
                End Using
     End Udsing
 End If
End Try

The above code works fine if you want to send data to a web service. However, to send to a webpage all we have to do is replace the service uri {Web-Service-Uri} on line 07 with web page address, something like this:

webreq = HttpWebRequest.Create("{Web-Service-Uri}") –> Posting to a web service

webreq = HttpWebRequest.Create("http://localhost:1886/service-data-receiver.aspx" ) –> Posting to a web page

The part which I had to figure out was how to access the data sent from a web service to my page. Since the request was not originated by a page-based model, I couldn't use Request.Forms or Request.QueryString. After some research I found that it is just Request object that can be used to access data. Yes, that is it.

Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object , ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load

 Dim response1 As String = HttpUtility.UrlDecode(Request( "data"))Dim doc As XDocument = XDocument.Parse(response1)     
 doc.Save( "C:\inetpub\wwwroot\service-data-received.xml" )
 Response.Write(response1)

End Sub

HTH,

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