RESTful WCF service that can respond in both JSON(P) and XML and still be used as SOAP web service?

Question

Given a contract such as:

[ServiceContract] public interface IService
{
    [OperationContract]
    [WebGet(UriTemplate = "GetData/{id}.{format}")]
    ResponseData GetData(string id, string format);
}

Is there a way to get the service to respond with json when requested as: /GetData/1234.json, xml when requested as /GetData/1234.xml and still be available as a proper soap service at some other url, with a strongly typed wsdl contract?

Using a Stream as the return value for GetData is not workable, as though it fufills the first two requirements, wcf can't create a full wsdl specification as it has no idea what the contents of the resultant Stream will be.

casperOne casperOne · Accepted Answer · 2009-03-03T19:32:06

You should have two separate methods which take id and format (and they would call a shared implementation that returns ResponseData) which have different WebGet attributes:

[ServiceContract]
public interface IService
{
    [OperationContract]
    [WebGet(UriTemplate = "GetData/{id}.{format}.xml", 
        ResponseFormat=WebMessageFormat.Xml)]
    ResponseData GetDataXml(string id, string format);

    [OperationContract]
    [WebGet(UriTemplate = "GetData/{id}.{format}.json", 
        ResponseFormat=WebMessageFormat.Json)]
    ResponseData GetDataJson(string id, string format);
}

For the SOAP endpoint, you should be able to call either method, but you are going to have to have a separate ServiceHost instance hosting the implementation of the contract.

RESTful WCF service that can respond in both JSON(P) and XML and still be used as SOAP web service?

1 Answers