Soap client and server for net core based on xml specification

Reason for this project.

Currently net core does not support soap12 addressing for clients, no support for soap services and to complex for most of my projects. This implementation allow me to use the same controller for soap and json requests

nuget

PM> Install-Package Medella.SoapCore

Soap service

To Use soap services add the following line to your config in the startup.cs.

public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app)
{
	app.UseSoapServices<Startup>();
}

Now you have to create your soap service interface with the request and response object

public class IsAliveResponse : object
{
	[XmlElement(Namespace = "urn:www-vecozo-nl:messages:isalive:v1")]
	public bool Resultaat { get; set; }
}

public class IsAliveRequest : object
{
}

[ServiceContract(Namespace = "urn:www-vecozo-nl:isalive:v1")]
public class AliveService
{
	[OperationContract(Action = "urn:www-vecozo-nl:v1:isalive", ReplyAction = "urn:www-vecozo-nl:v1:isaliveresponse")]
	public IsAliveResponse IsAlive(IsAliveRequest request)
	{
		return new IsAliveResponse { Resultaat = true };
	}
}

Soap Client

The soap client can be used when it added to your services in the startup.cs

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
	services.AddSoapClients();
}

Use a client in a controller

public class SoapController
{
	private readonly SoapClient<Config, DownloadPdfRequest, DownloadPdfResponse> _client;

	public SoapController(SoapClient<Config, DownloadPdfRequest, DownloadPdfResponse> client)
	{
		_client = client;
	}

	public async Task DownloadPdf(int pdfId)
	{
		var request = new DownloadPdfRequest { PdfId = pdfId };
		var result = await _client.PostAsync(request);
	}

	public class Config : ISoapConfig
	{
		public string Namespace => "urn:www-vecozo-nl:vsp:edp:declareren:downloaden:v1";
		public string SoapActionElementName => "DownloadPdf";
		public string SoapAction => $"{Namespace}:{SoapActionElementName}";
		public X509Certificate ClientCertificate => new SoapClientX509Certificate2(new OutgoingCertificateProvider());

		public string GetUrl(IHostingEnvironment env)
		{
			return "https://accedpwebservice.vecozo.nl/Router.V1.svc/DownloadenRetourinformatieV1";
		}
	}
}

Backgroud

Soap service implementation

The middleware will scan all soap request. Soap requests has an action. In the wsdl file these actions are specifoed. With a WCF tool the xsd can converted to C#.

The c# file is a good starting point but can't be used and should be converted to a less verbose version. The generated file can't be used because the default xml serializer and the soap xml serializer use different attributes to specify namespaces.

Also the 4 reference to system.servicemodelxxx should be removed when the VS tool is used.

The implemented soap service read only attributes of the service contract and operation contracts. all other attributes should be removed and new xmlElement attributes should be placed on the right properties A xml attribute is only needed to set the correct namespace and can be used to overrule a elementname

incomming call

When the middleware sees a soap request then the service that implements the 'action' is started by DI. The soap request is parsed and converted to the request object parameter of the operation All namespaces are removed by the parser. Be sure that your request object has no namespaces. Just remove all soap attributes from the generated c# file should be fine.

outgoing response

The action is called and the response object is returned to the middeleware. The middeware serialize this object with an xmlserialize to a soap response. Be sure that you have set the correct namespaces on the properies of the response object. NB: If the namespace is not changed on a deeper level then the namespace attribute can be skipped.

troubleshooting

Problems with soap(xml) is almost always namespaces. there should be no namespace placed on all request parameter objects. Only on the response object there should be namespace on the right place. Soap set namespaces on classes you should set the namespace on properties that refer to the classes.

The soap request and response xml will be logged on debug level.

Soap Client implementation

A soap client can be instantiated by the DI. The client is specified by a config type, response type and a request type. The generated WCF file is only used for the response and request object. Attributes on service and operation are ignored. There are 3 things that should be copied from the service/operation attributes to the config file

• the soapaction from action attribute on the operationcontract
• the ActionElementname. this the methodename without the async
• the namespace from the servicecontract.

The url and the clientcertificate are also in the config file. The url can depend on the enviroment.