How to: Control Whether Web Service Method Parameters Are Enclosed in an Extra Element

Article
02/13/2011

This topic is specific to a legacy technology. XML Web services and XML Web service clients should now be created using Windows Communication Foundation.

The parameters or return value for a Web service method can automatically be encapsulated within a parent XML element within the Body element of a SOAP message, or be bound directly to message part elements in a Web Services Description Language (WSDL) document. The .NET Framework refers to these two choices, respectively, as wrapped and bare and controls them using attributes.

To specify that parameters are encapsulated within one XML element

Apply a SoapDocumentMethod attribute to the method in the proxy class calling the applicable Web service method, setting the ParameterStyle property to Wrapped.

The following code example sets the ParameterStyle to Wrapped. It also sets the parameter formatting style to Literal.

[SoapDocumentMethod("https://www.contoso.com/DocumentWrappedLiteral",
                    RequestNamespace="https://www.contoso.com",
                    ResponseNamespace="https://www.contoso.com", 
                    Use=SoapBindingUse.Literal, 
                    ParameterStyle=SoapParameterStyle.Wrapped)]
public string DocumentWrappedLiteral(Address1 address, 
                                     bool useZipPlus4) {

<SoapDocumentMethod("https://www.contoso.com/DocumentWrappedLiteral", _
                    RequestNamespace:="https://www.contoso.com", _
                    ResponseNamespace:="https://www.contoso.com", _
                    Use:=SoapBindingUse.Literal, _
                    ParameterStyle:=SoapParameterStyle.Wrapped)> _
Public Function DocumentWrappedLiteral(ByVal address As Address1, _
                             ByVal useZipPlus4 As Boolean) As String

The XML portion of the SOAP request encapsulates the parameters in an element named by default after the Web service method.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
               xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
               xmlns:soap="https://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <soap:Body>
    <DocumentWrappedLiteral xmlns="https://www.contoso.com">
      <MyAddress>
        <Street>string</Street>
        <City>string</City>
        <Zip>string</Zip>
      </MyAddress>
      <useZipPlus4>boolean</useZipPlus4>
    </DocumentWrappedLiteral>
  </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

The XML portion of the SOAP response encapsulates the out parameters for the Web service method, including the result inside an element. The name of the encapsulating element, by default, is the name of the Web service method with Response appended to it.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
               xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
               xmlns:soap="https://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <soap:Body>
    <DocumentWrappedLiteralResponse xmlns="https://www.contoso.com">
      <DocumentWrappedLiteralResult>string
      </DocumentWrappedLiteralResult>
    </DocumentWrappedLiteralResponse>
  </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

To specify that parameters directly follow the Body element

Apply a SoapDocumentMethod attribute to the method in the proxy class calling the applicable Web service method, setting the ParameterStyle property to Bare.

The following example, which was generated by Wsdl.exe, sets the ParameterStyle to Bare, along with setting the parameter formatting style to Literal. Since the namespace cannot be specified in an element encapsulating all parameters, the namespace must be specified individually for each parameter and return value. Applying an XmlElementAttribute to each parameter and to the return value, and setting the Namespace property, can do this.

[SoapDocumentMethod(
     "https://www.contoso.com/DocumentBareLiteral",
     Use=SoapBindingUse.Literal,
     ParameterStyle=SoapParameterStyle.Bare)]
[return: XmlElement(Namespace="https://www.contoso.com",                    IsNullable=true)]
public string DocumentBareLiteral(
   [XmlElement(Namespace="https://www.contoso.com",
                     IsNullable=true)] 
   Address1 MyAddress, 
   [XmlElement(Namespace="https://www.contoso.com",
            IsNullable=false)] 
   bool useZipPlus4) {

<SoapDocumentMethod( _
     https://www.contoso.com/DocumentBareLiteral", _
     Use:=SoapBindingUse.Literal, _
     ParameterStyle:= SoapParameterStyle.Bare)> _
Public Function DocumentBareLiteral( _
   ByVal <XmlElement([Namespace]:="https://www.contoso.com", _
                      IsNullable:=true)> _
   MyAddress As Address1, _
   ByVal <XmlElement([Namespace]:="https://www.contoso.com", _
                      IsNullable:=false)> _
   useZipPlus4 As Boolean) _
   As <XmlElement([Namespace]:="https://www.contoso.com", _
                  IsNullable:=true)> _
   String

The XML elements that the parameters are mapped to within the SOAP request directly follow the Body element, with each specifying a namespace.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
               xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
               xmlns:soap="https://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <soap:Body>
    <MyAddress xmlns="https://www.contoso.com">
      <Street>string</Street>
      <City>string</City>
      <Zip>string</Zip>
    </MyAddress>
    <useZipPlus4 xmlns="https://www.contoso.com">boolean</useZipPlus4>
  </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

The out parameters, including the return value, are mapped to XML elements following the Body element within the SOAP response. The return value element name is the name of the Web service method with a Result suffix, by default.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:soap="https://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <soap:Body>
    <DocumentBareLiteralResult xmlns="https://www.contoso.com">
       string</DocumentBareLiteralResult>
  </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

How to: Control Whether Web Service Method Parameters Are Enclosed in an Extra Element

To specify that parameters are encapsulated within one XML element

To specify that parameters directly follow the Body element

See Also

Reference

Other Resources

Additional resources