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Accessing SOAP Headers in WCF Messages with Orchestrations

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To access the SOAP header values of incoming WCF messages in orchestrations, you use the context property WCF.InboundHeaders. The WCF adapters copy custom SOAP headers and standard SOAP headers in the inbound messages to the WCF.InboundHeaders property. The WCF adapters also allow you to select the properties you would like to promote or write to the context properties programmatically. See SOAP Headers with Published WCF Services for more details.

The value contained in the context property is a string containing XML data with the <headers> root element, and the incoming SOAP headers are copied as child elements of the <headers> element. The simplest way to access this data is to use the BizTalk Expression Editor in a Message Assignment or Expression shape, load the string in an XmlDocument, and use XPath queries to access specific fields. For more information about creating XML documents in the BizTalk Expression Editor, see XLANG-s Language.

The following code example gets the request SOAP header in a Message Assignment or Expression shape for the WCF.InboundHeaders property:

stringVar = inboundMessageInstance(WCF.InboundHeaders);

Context properties are associated with a particular message. The Messaging Engine does not automatically map the values of the SOAP headers from the request message to the response message. When creating the response message for a WCF service, you must specifically set the SOAP header values through the WCF.OutboundCustomHeaders property. The following command is the simplest method of setting a SOAP header context property:

outboundMessageInstance(WCF.OutbounCustomHeaders) = "<headers><Origination xmlns=\"http://SOAPHeaderSchemas.OrigDestSOAPHeader\">Home</Origination><Destination xmlns=\"http://SOAPHeaderSchemas.OrigDestSOAPHeader\">Work</Destination></headers>"

You can also set the context property by creating an XmlDocument and writing the string value of the XmlDocument to the context property.

For more information about how to access SOAP headers with the WCF adapters, see the SDK sample "Using Custom SOAP Headers with the WCF Adapters" at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=79960.

See Also

Accessing SOAP Headers in WCF Messages with Pipeline Components WCF Adapters Property Schema and Properties SOAP Headers with Consumed WCF Services