Question

How do I make a web service return text instead of xml?

Asked by: 1_21gigawatts

I have a simple web service (copied from a book). I have it installed, and it works OK, but. this will become a much larger application, returning many lines of text, and the xml just gets in the way of my consumer of this data.

Instead of returning xml, I just want it to return plain text.
I'm sure there's a simple way to do this, but I'm a total newbie at this stuff (I really do microcontrollers).

Imports System.Web
Imports System.Web.Services
Imports System.Web.Services.Protocols
 
' To allow this Web Service to be called from script, using ASP.NET AJAX, uncomment the following line.
' <System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptService()> _
<WebService(Namespace:="http://pvtest.org/")> _
<WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo:=WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)> _
<Global.Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.DesignerGenerated()> _
Public Class Service
    Inherits System.Web.Services.WebService
 
    <WebMethod()> _
    Public Function ServerTime() As String
        ServerTime = Left(Now.TimeOfDay().ToString(), 8)
    End Function
    <WebMethod()> _
    Public Function CalculatePercentage(ByVal mytotal _
     As Integer, ByVal myvalue As Integer) As Integer
        CalculatePercentage = CInt(myvalue * 100 / mytotal)
    End Function
 
End Class

                                  
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Asked On
2009-09-17 at 19:54:57ID24742169
Tags

aspx

,

vb

,

.net

,

service

Topics

Web Services and WCF

,

WebApplications

,

.NET Framework 3.x versions

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
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Answers

 

by: kumar754Posted on 2009-09-18 at 18:49:05ID: 25371159

you cannot do this in .net web service.

However you can do is create a aspx webpage to print the text that you intend to return from web service. and you can call this webpage from asp.net/vb.net console application to get that large text.

//Your mypage.aspx.cs page that will return large text
Page_Load()
{
   response.write("large text");
}


and from other aspx page: try this

Dim objWriter As System.IO.TextWriter
Server.Execute("mypage.aspx", objWriter)
Response.Write(objWriter.ToString())
 


** but returning data from aspx page will not solve you purpose as what web service can do. best is use your webservice only.. you can do is using the webservice proxy class, create the object of the WebService and call the WebMethod direcly within the code.. this will return the string dataType directly and you dong have to deal with xml anymore..

try searching, as how to utilize webservice proxy, so you can use the webservice like:

Dim strServerTime as string
Dim objWebService as New Service

strServerTime = objWebService.ServerTime()

 

by: 1_21gigawattsPosted on 2009-09-18 at 21:01:28ID: 31630384

Thanks very much. That's just what I was looking for.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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