Web service helper methods

Here are some common service provider helper methods for web services or applications:

WCFSerializationHelpers:

This uses a data contract serializer and deserializer to serialize the object and return it as string. It supports more than one format such as XML or JSON output. The object should be checked for serializability before performing the operation. This could be tested with:

public static T WcfRoundtripSerialize<T>(T instance) where T : class, new()

 RestServiceAsyncClientHelpers:

This  is a helper class to make ‘GET’ and  ‘POST’ calls asynchronously using HttpWebRequest.BeginGetResponse like methods. XmlSerializer can be used to serialize / de-serialize the streams. Method and ContentType as ‘text/xml’ should also be specified

SOAPMessageInspector :  

This is a helper class to dump the SOAP messages or for modifying them. These can be hooked to the SOAP stream by implementing SOAPExtension. Helper methods can be invoked based on the stage of the processing as discerned from the soap server message.