Web Services                   

 

Web services are (at least according to me) the main point of .NET.  They are the tool for enabling a program on computer A to call programs on computer B just as if they were running on computer A.   The vision is that the entire Internet is (or will eventually be) just one big computer.  

 

Some of the difficulties involved are similar to the difficulties that ActiveX was invented to solve:  how can programs written in different languages call each other?  We learned that IDL (interface definition language) was the solution to that problem. Similarly,  there is WSDL  (Web services definition language).    This language is described in a document submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium by (employees of)  Ariba, IBM, and Microsoft.   The full document is available at

 

http://www.w3.org/TR/wsdl#_types

 

You might want to go there and read the introduction.  There is no need to read the whole document for CS130.  Here is an excerpt:

 

As communications protocols and message formats are standardized in the web community, it becomes increasingly possible and important to be able to describe the communications in some structured way. WSDL addresses this need by defining an XML grammar for describing network services as collections of communication endpoints capable of exchanging messages. WSDL service definitions provide documentation for distributed systems and serve as a recipe for automating the details involved in applications communication.

A WSDL document defines services as collections of network endpoints, or ports. In WSDL, the abstract definition of endpoints and messages is separated from their concrete network deployment or data format bindings. This allows the reuse of abstract definitions: messages, which are abstract descriptions of the data being exchanged, and port types which are abstract collections of operations. The concrete protocol and data format specifications for a particular port type constitutes a reusable binding. A port is defined by associating a network address with a reusable binding, and a collection of ports define a service.

Don’t be surprised if that is difficult to understand. It’s not your fault—it’s just a sketch.  To understand WSDL you would have to study it hard.  From this introduction you’re just supposed to get a vague idea that WSDL defines a language in which web services can be described.   Here’s the

 

Bottom Line:   Every web service is defined in a  .wsdl file.  

 

For example, the Google Search web service that you will use in your programming assignment is defined in the file GoogleSearch.wsdl.  That file is found at

 

http://api.google.com/GoogleSearch.wsdl

 

That file is quite readable.   Near the bottom it defines the services offered by the GoogleSearch service, in terms of messages.  The functions you can call are defined by message names beginning with do.  Their arguments are indicated as “parts” of the message.  

 

Question:  IDL (Interface Definition Language) is used to specify interfaces for COM components.  Why do we need WSDL when we already have IDL?  Isn’t IDL enough to describe a web service by telling its properties, methods, and the events it can fire?   Answer:   While properties, methods, and events can be considered as messages in the sense of WSDL, IDL only defines some fixed types;  WSDL doesn’t contain a type definition language at all, but allows you to use IDL for that purpose if you like or some other type definition language.  WSDL also offers XML-based ways to define data formats.

 

Question:  What do I do with a WSDL file?   Answer:  You want to use a tool that reads the WSDL file for you and creates a corresponding class in your program, with methods corresponding to the interface defined in the WSDL file.   Each of these methods, when called, will create a network connection to the web service,  prepare (“marshall”) the arguments to the method in the XML format specified in the WSDL file,  send the “message” to the web service, receive the answer in XML form, and return it to the method’s caller in your program.    In Visual Studio, this class and its methods are created for you when you choose Add Web Reference and point to a WSDL file.

 

An Example Program

 

Here are the steps to reproduce the example discussed in lecture.    The Web service we will use is the Google search service.  This web service provides an API (Application Programming Interface)  to the Google search engine.

 

 

1.  Create a new project called WebServicesDemo,  Make it a C#  “Windows Application”.

 

2.    In Solution Explorer,  right-click WebServicesDemo and choose Add Web Reference.

Alternately, you can use the menus:  Project | Add Web Reference.  

 

3.   Navigate to  http://api.google.com/GoogleSearch.wsdl .  When you see the Google Search Service in the Services Available at this URL window, click Add Reference.    The WSDL file provides a formal description of the API of this web service.

 

4.  Go to Class View and look under WebServicesDemo | com.  Observe that you have several classes, including GoogleSearchService, and in that class, many methods, all available to use in your code.  Observe that all these methods are in the namespace WebServicesDemo.com.google.api.  Here is a screen shot to show what you will see:

 

 

5.  At the top of your Form file,  after the other “using” commands, put in

 

using WebServicesDemo.com.google.api;

 

This will enable you to create classes and call methods in the Web service without causing a compile-time error.  

 

6.  Go the Form Designer and add two labels, a text box, and a list box.  Make the text in the text box empty and name it SearchBox.   Name the list box ResultsBox.   Add a button named SearchButton  with text Search.  Make the text of the labels as shown in the following picture:

 

 

 

6.  Double-click the Search button to go to its handler.    Here’s the code to type in or paste in there. 

 

{

  ResultsBox.Items.Clear();

  // Create a Google Search object

  GoogleSearchService s = new GoogleSearchService();

  String key = "cdXP+PpQFHJF/2ydd/KsaDqWFvcpDFCH";

  try

  {

      // Invoke the search method

      GoogleSearchResult result =

      s.doGoogleSearch(key, SearchBox.Text, 0, 10, false, "", false, "", "", "");

      foreach (ResultElement re in result.resultElements)

            ResultsBox.Items.Add(re.URL);

   }

  catch (System.Net.WebException ex)

  {

     MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);

    }

 }

 

Observe the “key” in the code.  You can get one the way I did, by registering at the Google website;  but you can use this one for trying out the service. Each key is good for 1000 queries, and we used some of them last year.  There are 71 students to share the remaining queries, so don’t use more than a few of them, please.  (Also, if you are not a student in this class, please do us a favor: don’t use this key at all. Get your own key for free by registering at the Google website.)

 

 

7.  Build and run your program.   You should see that you get the first ten URLs returned by Google for whatever search term you entered.    Your program could do whatever it wanted with those URLS, including, of course, allow the user to navigate to them using a Web Browser control.

Here’s a picture of a sample result.

 

 

8.   Add a text box SpellBox, a Spell  button,  a label SpellResultLabel, as shown below.  Use the property sheet of SpellResultLabel to achieve this appearance:

Here’s the code behind the Spell button:

 

private void spellButton_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)

{  // Create a Google Search object

    GoogleSearchService s = new GoogleSearchService();

     String key = "cdXP+PpQFHJF/2ydd/KsaDqWFvcpDFCH";

     try

     { // Ask for spelling suggestion

       String suggestion = s.doSpellingSuggestion(key, spellBox.Text);

       // Display the suggestion, if any

      if (suggestion == null)

          spellResultLabel.Text = "<no suggestion>";

     else        

            spellResultLabel.Text = suggestion;

    }

    catch (System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapException ex)

  {

      MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);

   }

}